DOCSLIB.ORG

Peddling an Arab American History: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Syrian American Communities

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Peddling an Arab American History: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Syrian American Communities Peddling an Arab American History: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Syrian American Communities A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Charlotte Marie Albrecht IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Jigna Desai, Adviser August 2013 © Charlotte Marie Albrecht 2013 Acknowledgements The work of this dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many. First, my adviser, Jigna Desai, has been a constant source of encouragement, guidance, and productive critique throughout this process. Were it not for her, I would have never discovered the jewel of Oklahoma! Reg Kunzel, Erika Lee, Shaden Tageldin, and Sarah Gualtieri rounded out a fantastic interdisciplinary committee that helped me to see all that was possible for my work from many different perspectives. The Department of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota was an abundant and flexible intellectual home. Gratitude to Eden Torres, Richa Nagar, Zenzele Isoke, Idalia Robles de Leon, Angela Brandt, Amy Kaminsky, Jacqueline Zita, Susan Craddock, and Naomi Scheman. Special thanks to Haven Hawley, Daniel Necas, Sara Wakefield, Saengmany Ratsabout, and everyone at the Immigration History Research Center. Thanks is due as well to other faculty who have supported me along the way: Joe Kadi, Amira Jarmakani, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Rabab Abdulhadi, Lisa Albrecht, Trica Keaton, and David Chang. To my double-duty friends, thank you for knowing when to talk about “our work” and when to leave it: especially Katie Bashore, Elakshi Kumar, Jasmine Tang, Juliana Hu Pegues, Emily Smith Beitiks, Kelly Condit-Shrestha, Myrl Beam, and Simi Kang. To Jessica Giusti, thank you for the pep talks, the trash talks, and that big heart of yours. To Umayyah Cable and Mejdulene Shomali, thank you for making a community with me, to our home-away-from-home at conferences, and to the future that we’re building together. To Lana Barkawi, Flo Razowsky, Nahid Khan, Kathy Haddad, Rabi’h Nahas, Willie Nour, Khaldoun Samman, Susan Raffo, Bao Phi, Reema Bazzy, Katie Spencer, Becky Smith, Jessica Rosenberg, Ethan Laubach, and Jna Shelomith, as well as many others, thank you for fueling my creative life and making the Twin Cities home. To Thea Lee, Charissa Uemura, Charissa Blue, Sharon Goens, Marie Michael, and Sun Yung Shin, I am forever changed by the work we’ve done together. Thank you for giving me a deeper understanding of what liberation can be. Finally, to all of my family, especially my parents, Kenneth and Constance Albrecht, thank you for your love and unyielding vision that I could do this. To Katie, thank you for sticking with me, for grounding me, and for reminding me of all there is to celebrate. i Table of Contents List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………iii Explanation of Terms…………………………………….............................................iv Introduction………………………………………………………………..…...............1 1. Narrating Arab American History: The Peddling Thesis...…………….…….............42 2. Peddlers, “Persians,” and Roving Sexual Threats: Syrian Male Peddlers in Popular Culture………………………………………………………...…………….......…….81 3. “From Peddling it is Only a Step to Begging”: Syrian Immigrants and Social Welfare…………………………………………….………………………..……….123 4. Erotics and Intimacies: Imaging and Imagining Pleasure in Early Arab America….169 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...207 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………214 ii List of Figures 1. Karem family tree excerpt………………………………………………………74 2. Karem family tree excerpt, re-envisioned……………………………………….76 3. Photo of Syrian family in diaspora, ca. 1920…………………………………...194 4. Photo of Syrian American business-owners, ca. 1913………………………….195 5. Photo of Daher and Khalil, ca. 1920……………………………………………197 6. Photo of George and Dell, 1925……………………………………………..…198 7. Photo of Nazha and Bud, 1925…………………………………………………202 iii Explanation of Terms Ethnic, cultural and racial terms—their definitions, uses, and slippages of meaning—play significant roles in the history of race for migrants from West Asia and North Africa. It is thus important to enumerate my use of certain terms. Naming in racial and ethnic identity is a complicated practice that is fraught with contradictions and exclusions. With the understanding that there is no “perfect” way to label ourselves or each other, that there exists no way to satisfy the many contentions of essentialism or exclusion that naming entails, I will explain here my choices for the labels I do employ. Some feminist and queer critiques have generated an alternative geographically based descriptor—Southwest Asian and North African or SWANA. According to Nadine Naber, this term disrupts the imperialist narrative of “Middle Eastern” while also pushing against “patriarchal and homophobic nationalisms” and including in its rubric non-Arabs from the region who share a similar history.1 While I think each of these critiques is valid, because this project intentionally addresses “Arab American studies” as an emerging discipline and the specific history of Arabs in the United States, I will mainly use the terms “Arab” and “Arab American” in this dissertation to refer to people whose origins (either birth or ancestral) are in West (or Southwest) Asia and North Africa but who reside (even temporarily) in the United States. I find it critical to reclaim “Arab” politically in the United States, in order to resist the systematic and singular associations 1. Nadine Naber, “Introduction: Arab Americans and U.S. Racial Formations,” in Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects, eds. Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), 9. iv of “Arab” with “terrorist” and the many obfuscations those associations entail. Of course, the use of the term “Arab” would have a different significance if I was writing and working from a different locale. When speaking more generally about people who have ancestral roots in the “Middle East,” including those who do not identify as or are not ethnically considered Arab, I refer to the people of “West Asia and North Africa.” Finally, I use the term “Syrian” to denote people coming from the region of Greater Syria under the Ottoman Empire (the present-day regions of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine), which constituted the first significant wave of Arab migration to and through the United States before World War II. “Syrian” is also the term that these migrants used to refer to themselves during the time period in question. Thus I use these terms tentatively, and with the knowledge that they are always contingent upon context and strategy. v Introduction Down the street he comes, a man apart, knowing no friend; his queer dress, his hooked nose, his broken speech and queer mannerisms set him aside from the rest—the peddler of rugs. On his arm, a gaudy display of rugs and scarfs [sic], gleaming like jewels in the sunlight. Sparkling tinsel and glistening silk, yet alas, they bear no blessing of a known manufacturer, a thing made only to sell through the picturing of the faults of others. Bearing a guarantee of a foreigner who you will perhaps never see again. Nor are the political rugs exemplified by the candidacy of Dr. M. Shadid of any better quality. These rugs too glisten in the light of hard times; they are smooth, but what lies under the surface?—Will they, like the peddler’s rug, fade, will they become a thing forsaken, dirty, unfit to have around? After the first washing, what will we have?...No American parentage glorifies this person, and no American philosophy blesses his doctrine. We need no off-color Jews as congressmen, nor do we need off-color capital-baiting lines of thought in our national make-up. —“The Peddler of Rugs”2 In 1927, Dr. Michael Shadid, a resident of Elk City, Oklahoma, found himself the victim of social isolation in Elk City and backlash in the Syrian American community, due to the presence of the Ku Klux Klan and Shadid’s public comments about racism in the United States. Shadid was born in 1882 in Marj’ayoun, a town in what is known today as southern Lebanon. At the time of Shadid’s birth, it was part of Syria, a large, Ottoman-ruled province in West Asia.3 Shadid came to the United States in 1898, worked as a traveling peddler for a short time, and eventually settled in Oklahoma, after living in Texas and getting his medical license in St. Louis. As an Arab, an immigrant, and a proponent of cooperative medicine living during the Ku Klux Klan’s virulent resurgence 2. “The Peddler of Rugs,” The Vici Beacon, 1927, Elk City, Oklahoma. 3. Ottoman-held Syria, also called Greater Syria or bilad al-sham in Arabic, covered the geographies of present-day Lebanon, Syria, Israel/Occupied Palestine, and parts of Jordan. 1 in Oklahoma, Shadid attracted attention. In February, Shadid wrote to The Syrian World, an English-language periodical for the Syrian American community, and told the editors of his experience with the Ku Klux Klan in Oklahoma. Dr. Shadid wrote that, despite his success as a physician, he was socially ostracized by Klan members because of his race. Shadid then made two provocative claims: first, Syrians were not welcome in the United States because of their race; and second, Syrians should return to Syria, where they were needed to contribute to and advance the economy. The response to Shadid’s letter from the Syrian American community was prolific. Readers and the editors of The Syrian World responded to rebut the assertion that they were racially ostracized, often arguing that Shadid’s experience were specific to Elk City and not characteristic of the United States as a whole. Shadid also responded to these rebuttals to affirm that he had experienced the same discrimination in several other U.S. locales in which he had lived before moving to Oklahoma. Readers especially rejected the notion that Syrians should return to Syria (despite the fact that many Syrians did return rather than live out the remainder of their lives in diaspora).
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Stirring the American Melting Pot: Middle Eastern Immigration, the Progressives, and the Legal Construction of Whiteness, 1880-1
    Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2013 Stirring the American Melting Pot: Middle Eastern Immigration, the Progressives and the Legal Construction of Whiteness, 1880-1924 Richard Soash Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES STIRRING THE AMERICAN MELTING POT: MIDDLE EASTERN IMMIGRATION, THE PROGRESSIVES AND THE LEGAL CONSTRUCTION OF WHITENESS, 1880-1924 By RICHARD SOASH A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2013 Richard Soash defended this thesis on March 7, 2013. The members of the supervisory committee were: Jennifer Koslow Professor Directing Thesis Suzanne Sinke Committee Member Peter Garretson Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii To my Grandparents: Evan & Verena Soash Richard & Patricia Fluck iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely thankful for both the academic and financial support that Florida State University has provided for me in the past two years. I would also like to express my gratitude to the FSU History Department for giving me the opportunity to pursue my graduate education here. My academic advisor and committee members – Dr. Koslow, Dr. Sinke, and Dr. Garretson – have been wonderful teachers and mentors during my time in the Master’s Program; I greatly appreciate their patience, humor, and knowledge, both inside and outside of the classroom.
    [Show full text]
  • Race and Transnationalism in the First Syrian-American Community, 1890-1930
    Abstract Title of Thesis: RACE ACROSS BORDERS: RACE AND TRANSNATIONALISM IN THE FIRST SYRIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY, 1890-1930 Zeinab Emad Abrahim, Master of Arts, 2013 Thesis Directed By: Professor, Madeline Zilfi Department of History This research explores the transnational nature of the citizenship campaign amongst the first Syrian Americans, by analyzing the communication between Syrians in the United States with Syrians in the Middle East, primarily Jurji Zaydan, a Middle-Eastern anthropologist and literary figure. The goal is to demonstrate that while Syrian Americans negotiated their racial identity in the United States in order to attain the right to naturalize, they did so within a transnational framework. Placing the Syrian citizenship struggle in a larger context brings to light many issues regarding national and racial identity in both the United States and the Middle East during the turn of the twentieth century. RACE ACROSS BORDERS: RACE AND TRANSNATIONALISM IN THE FIRST SYRIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY, 1890-1930 by Zeinab Emad Abrahim Thesis submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts 2013 Advisory Committee: Professor, Madeline Zilfi, Chair Professor, David Freund Professor, Peter Wien © Copyright by Zeinab Emad Abrahim 2013 For Mahmud, Emad, and Iman ii Table of Contents List of Images…………………………………………………………………....iv Introduction………………………………………………………………………1-12 Chapter 1: Historical Contextualization………………………………………13-25
    [Show full text]
  • Arab American Faces, Places, and Traces
    BEYOND THE LABEL: ARAB AMERICAN FACES, PLACES, AND TRACES Arab American Studies Association Conference in Honor of Alixa Naff(1919–2013) Arab American National Museum Dearborn, Michigan April 4-6, 2014 Tribute to Alixa Naff HISTORIan, FOLKLORIST, and pioneering to serve as a consultant for a documentary scholar of Arab American Studies, Dr. Alixa film on Arabs in America. Frustrated by the Naff, passed away in 2013 at the ripe age of lack of materials, Naff became re-dedicated 93 in Bowie, MD. She began with humble to collecting and archiving the history of Arab origins, born in 1919 in Rashayya al-Wadi, Americans. She collected more materials and a village located in the former Ottoman she donated her tape recordings and artifacts province of Syria and now part of the country to the National Museum of American History of Lebanon. Shortly thereafter her parents at the Smithsonian in a collection named after moved to the U.S., to Spring Valley, Illinois, her parents, Faris and Yamna Naff, in 1984. then to Fort Wayne, Indiana, before settling In 1985, Southern Illinois Press published her in Detroit, Michigan, to run a family grocery important book Becoming American: The Early store. Alixa became interested in the subject Arab Immigrant Experience. For years after of Arab Americans when she wrote a paper her book was published and the collection on Arabs in America for a history seminar inaugurated, Dr. Naff served as a volunteer on immigration during the senior year of her archivist of the Faris and Yamna Naff collection. B.A. degree at the University of California, She also created another collection on her Los Angeles (UCLA).
    [Show full text]
  • Toward an Arabic Modernism: Politics, Poetics, and the Postcolonial
    University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- 2021 Toward an Arabic Modernism: Politics, Poetics, and the Postcolonial Alaa Taha University of Central Florida Part of the Arabic Language and Literature Commons, and the Arabic Studies Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020 University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020- by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Taha, Alaa, "Toward an Arabic Modernism: Politics, Poetics, and the Postcolonial" (2021). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-. 770. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd2020/770 TOWARD AN ARABIC MODERNISM: POLITICS, POETICS, AND THE POSTCOLONIAL by ALAA TAHA B.A. UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA, 2019 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of English in the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Summer Term 2021 © Alaa Taha 2021 ii ABSTRACT This thesis explores modernism’s temporality and location through the examination of Arabic modernism’s occurrence. In this thesis, I question whether the authenticity of modernism derives from its temporality period or its literary content while concurrently investigating several poems by Lebanese authors Kahlil Gibran and Nadia Tuéni and Syrian poet Adonis. Additionally, I trace Arabic modernism’s influence to the early 1900s-1910s to the conception of the Mahjar movement and the Pen League, an Arabic literary society consisting of Arabic immigrant writers.
    [Show full text]
  • The Infusion of Stars and Stripes: Sectarianism and National Unity in Little Syria, New York, 1890-1905
    W&M ScholarWorks Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects 2016 The Infusion of Stars and Stripes: Sectarianism and National Unity in Little Syria, New York, 1890-1905 Manal Kabbani College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd Part of the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Kabbani, Manal, "The Infusion of Stars and Stripes: Sectarianism and National Unity in Little Syria, New York, 1890-1905" (2016). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539626979. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-5ysg-8x13 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Dissertations, & Master Projects at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Infusion of Stars and Stripes: Sectarianism and National Unity in Little Syria, New York, 1890-1905 Manal Kabbani Springfield, Virginia Bachelors of Arts, College of William & Mary, 2013 A Thesis presented to the Graduate Faculty of the College of William and Mary in Candidacy for the Degree of Master of Arts Comparative and Transnational History The College of William and Mary January 2016 APPROVAL PAGE This Thesis is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (anal Kabbani . Approved by the Committee, October, 2014 Committee Chair Assistant Professor Ayfer Karakaya-Stump, History The College of William & Mary Associate Professor Hiroshi Kitamura, History The College of William & Mary AssistafvTProfessor Fahad Bishara, History The College of William & Mary ABSTRACT In August of 1905, American newspapers reported that the Greek Orthodox Bishop of the American Antioch, Rafa’el Hawaweeny, asked his Syrian migrant congregation to lay down their lives for him and kill two prominent Maronite newspaper editors in Little Syria, New York.
    [Show full text]
  • Linda K. Jacobs GENDERING BIRTH and DEATH in the NINETEENTH
    Mashriq & Mahjar 3, no. 1 (2015), 65-78 ISSN 2169-4435 Linda K. Jacobs GENDERING BIRTH AND DEATH IN THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY SYRIAN COLONY OF NEW YORK CITY Abstract The present paper describes three Syrian midwives and four Syrian doctors who lived in the nineteenth-century Syrian colony of New York City. Midwifery has been entirely overlooked in Middle Eastern migration studies, although, like peddling, it played an important role in the economic independence of Syrian women, offering them the chance to earn their own living and stand somewhat outside the strictures of both American and Syrian societies. Midwifery came under assault from outside the Syrian community in the early years of the twentieth century—when the medical establishment, aided by a virulent press, made midwifery illegal—as well as from inside, where the pressures to assimilate contributed to the demise of the traditional midwife and her replacement by western-trained doctors. All of the Syrian doctors who lived in the colony were trained at Syrian Protestant College (now American University of Beirut), and their western medical knowledge and authority played a role in the movement to marginalize midwives.1 BIRTH IN THE SYRIAN COLONY: MIDWIFERY Midwifery was a common profession for immigrant women in nineteenth-century America, one of the few—peddling was another—where a woman worked for herself. The importance of women peddlers to the economic wellbeing of the Syrian community has been well described by Sarah Gualtieri, Akram Khater, and Alixa Naff, among others.2 The literature is replete with stories of women who peddled to support themselves and their families and then helped their mates set up businesses, and anecdotes celebrating their independence and outspokenness come down to us through their families.3 Their independence was based not only on their earning power, but also on the fact that they were women out on the road alone or in pairs, away from the close scrutiny of their compatriots.
    [Show full text]
  • Árabes De Norteamérica
    Árabes Baha Abu-Laban, Rachad Antonius, Sharon de Norteamérica McIrvin Abu-Laban, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Helen Hatab Samhan, Michael W. Suleiman Tras la publicación de Contribuciones árabes a las identidades iberoamericanas, Casa Árabe aborda en este nuevo volumen otro episodio de la historia de los árabes en América, centrándose ahora en la mitad norte del continente: Canadá y Estados Unidos. Como en el caso iberoamericano, los factores econó- micos, políticos y sociales en Oriente Medio impulsa- ron la primera ola migratoria árabe, que llegó a finales Árabes del siglo XX a las costas de Estados Unidos y Canadá. La «tierra de oportunidades» y el crisol de culturas que de Norteamérica representaba todo el continente americano cobró gran resonancia en el caso de Norteamérica, donde, a ojos de los recién llegados, la riqueza, la industria, la educación, la tecnología y las libertades individuales podían garantizar el éxito buscado. No obstante, el proceso de instalación e integración fue complejo y a veces arduo. Pero el sentido de solidaridad entre los miembros de esta comunidad y el impulso empresa- rial logrado con la venta ambulante fortalecieron la asimilación de la segunda generación, ya nacida en América: los primeros araboamericanos. Una vez superados los argumentos raciales que impe- dían su plena integración en la vida pública norteame- ricana durante el proceso migratorio, dos relevantes sucesos de la política internacional marcaron el desa- rrollo de las comunidades árabes de Norteamérica. El año 1967, fecha de la derrota árabe frente a Israel en la guerra de los Seis Días, y el 11 de septiembre de 2001 fueron dos hitos de gran repercusión para ellos en su cotidiana vida americana.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 Preliminary Material
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Brownness: Mixed Identifications in Minority Immigrant Literature, 1900-1960 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1h43b9hg Author Rana, Swati Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Brownness: Mixed Identifications in Minority Immigrant Literature, 1900-1960 by Swati Rana A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Colleen Lye, Chair Professor Gautam Premnath Professor Marcial González Professor Rebecca McLennan Spring 2012 Copyright © 2012 by Swati Rana Abstract Brownness: Mixed Identifications in Minority Immigrant Literature, 1900-1960 by Swati Rana Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Colleen Lye, Chair My dissertation challenges our preconceptions of the ethnic literary tradition in the United States. Minority literature is generally read within a framework of resistance that prioritizes anti-hegemonic and anti-racist writings. I focus on a set of recalcitrant texts, written in the first part of the twentieth century, that do not fit neatly within this framework. My chapters trace an arc from Ameen Rihani’s !e Book of Khalid (1911), which personifies a universal citizen who refuses to be either Arab or American, to Paule Marshall’s Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), which dramatizes the appeal of white identification for upwardly mobile Barbadian immigrants. I present the first comparative analysis of Afro-Caribbean, Arab, Filipino, Latino, and South Asian immigrant writings. !is archive includes familiar figures such as Claude McKay and William Carlos Williams as well as understudied writers such as Abraham Rihbany and Dalip Singh Saund.
    [Show full text]
  • Syrian World a Monthly Magazine in English Dealing with Syrian Affairs and Arabic Literature
    VOLUME III, No! 3 SEPTEMBER, THE SYRIAN WORLD A MONTHLY MAGAZINE IN ENGLISH DEALING WITH SYRIAN AFFAIRS AND ARABIC LITERATURE AN ARAB-SYRIAN GENTLEMAN AND WJ OF THE CRUSADES DR. PHILIP K. HITTI THE GREATNESS OF THE SYRIAN RA REV. W. A. MANSUR THE ORANGE TREE SONIA RUTHELE NOVAK THE SAGE OF WASHINGTON STREET OJv DISPLAY OF WEALTH A. HAKIM TEXT OF THE NEW SYRIAN CONSTITU1 RECENT POLITICAL DEVELOPMENTS IN THE COPY 50c. II —HI II- II. " THE SYRIAN WORLD SALLOUM A. MOKARZEL, Editor. PUBLISHED MONTHLY BY THE SYRIAN-AMERICAN PRESS 104 GREENWICH STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. By subscription $5.00 a year. Single copies 50c. Entered as second-class matter, June 25, 1926, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. VOL. III. No. 3. SEPTEMBER, 1928 CONTENTS PAGE An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrier of the Crusades 3 DR. PHILIP K. HITTI The Greatness of the Syrian Race 10 REV. W. A. MONSUR The King of Aradus 17 KAHLIL GIBRAN Hassan Speaks (An Arabian Idyl) 18 DR. SALIM Y. ALKAZIN Arab Wisdom 20 The Orange Tree (A Poem) 21 SONIA RUTHELE NOVAK I ,* I " CONTENTS (Continued) PAGE The Sage of Washington Street (On the Display of Wealth 24 A. HAKIM + From the Harem in Syria 31 Miss SANNIYEH HABBOOB VOL. Books and Authors 33 Winds from the Moon 3? DR. NEJIB I. KATIBAH Forthcoming Books by Dr. Hitti 36 Immortality 36 The Syrian Constitution 37 Spirit of the Syrian Press .....40 Political Developments in Syria 44 About Syria and Syrians 49 Readers' Forum 55 ILLUSTRATIONS IN THIS ISSUE The Castle of Shayzar in Syria General View of Shayzar on the Orontes THE SYRIAN WORLD VOL.
    [Show full text]
  • Final Front Matter
    Defragmenting Identity in the Life Narratives of Iraqi North American Women by Lamees Al Ethari A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2014 © Lamees Al Ethari 2014 Author's Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract This dissertation examines contemporary Iraqi North American women’s life narratives within the frame of postcolonial autobiography theory. Through narrating their experiences of oppression, war, and displacement these women reveal the fragmentation of identity that occurs under such unsettling situations. However, I argue that in the course of narrating their stories and in spite of the fragmentation they suffer, these women are able to establish selves that distinguish and recover from fragmentation and loss through a process I term defragmentation. They are able to defragment their identities by reconstructing unique selves through the act of life narration, through relational remembering, and finally by resisting patriarchal and Western influences on how they perceive themselves and their experiences. Thus they are able to defragment their sense of disjointedness and reaffirm their sense of Iraqiness, even in the diaspora. This study explores the major causes of fragmentation in the work, which are divided into trauma and displacement. Unlike the studies and statistics that political approaches and media coverage have provided, these works shed light on the disruptions caused by war, oppression, separation from loved ones, and exile in the daily lives of these narrators or the lives of their friends and relatives.
    [Show full text]
  • Juhan's Jihad and the Blond Beast: Ameen Rihani Between Islamic Doctrine and Nietzschean Perspective
    -P- Rihani, Islam and Nietzsche Q8 H.,R Francesco Medici Juhan’s Jihad and the Blond Beast Ameen Rihani between Islamic Doctrine and Nietzschean Perspective Bibliography on Rihani between Islam & Nietzsche Juhan’s Jihad and the Blond Beast Ameen Rihani between Islamic Doctrine and Nietzschean Perspective Francesco Medici Member of the Kahlil Gibran International Association University of Maryland Abstract: «Who can reconcile the words of Muhammad […] with those of Zara- thustra?» wondered Ameen Rihani in his notebook on travel in Bombay, India, in September 1922 (Rihani, Ameen F. “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” The White Way and the Desert. Platform International, 2002, p. 123). The strong interest of the Lebanese Maronite Christian author in – and, according to some schol- ars, even his inclination towards – Islam is evident in several of his writings and public speeches. He was also an attentive reader of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose philosophy exerted a deep influence on him. All this is well-known, but is it possible to reconcile Islam and the German philosopher’s thought? Could Rihani achieve such a difficult aim? His references to Islamic religion and Nietzsche’s philosophy, already numerous especially in the novel The Book of Khalid, would seem to find their perfect synthesis in the novelette Juhan. Key Words: Ameen Rihani, Blond Beast, Friedrich Nietzsche, Holy War, Islam, Islamic Feminism, Jihad, Ottoman Empire, Sufism, Transvaluation of All Val- ues, Übermensch (Superman, Overman, Superhuman), Zarathustra. Nietzsche and Islam: a Probable Reception by Rihani the Novelist Between the late 19th and early 20th century, when Ameen Rihani read their English translations, none of Nietzsche’s books had found particu- lar favor with academic philosophers.
    [Show full text]
  • Investigating the Romantic Themes in the Mikha'il Na'ima's Poem
    Science Arena Publications Specialty Journal of Language Studies and Literature Available online at www.sciarena.com 2018, Vol, 2 (2): 1-10 Investigating The Romantic Themes in The Mikha'il Na'ima’s Poem Leila Jamshidi1, Mahmoud Heidari2, Ali Jahangiri Jameh Bozorgi3* 1Assistant Professor, Department of literature, Payam-e-Noor University of Noorabad mamasani branch, Noorabad Mamasani, Iran 2Associate Professor, Department of literature, Yasouj University, Yasouj, Iran 3MA, Department of literature, Payam-e-Noor University of Noorabad mamasani branch, Noorabad Mamasani, Iran *Corresponding Author Abstract: Mikha'il Na'ima is one of the most well-known and capable poets of contemporary and migrant Arab literature. Principles and teachings of the school of romanticism dominate most of the poet's works; investigating the romantic themes in this poet’s poem can help us to understand the personality dimensions of Na'ima, both socially and literally. In this regard, by using the analytical-descriptive method, the purpose of current study is to investigate and discuss the most important romantic themes and components in the poetry of this contemporary poet; in other words, the present study is based on the analysis of the content of the poems and examines romantic features in the works of Mikha'il Na'ima. Love is one of the key romantic themes in Na'ima’s poetry. The poet considers the love as affection and immortality in line with lover; he also likes peace, freedom, nature, and homeland. Mikha'il Na'ima portrays these themes with a complete artistic power and in a mold of sadness and unfulfilled grief in his works.
    [Show full text]