Queer Critique and Transnational Arab Culture by Mejdulene B

Moving Femininities: Queer Critique and Transnational Arab Culture by Mejdulene B. Shomali A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) in the University of Michigan 2015 Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Evelyn A. Alsultany, Co-Chair Associate Professor Nadine S. Naber, Co-Chair, University of Illinois at Chicago Assistant Professor Victor R. Mendoza Associate Professor Sarita E. See, University of California at Riverside Dedication for my parents ii Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the support of the many scholars, far and near, who constitute my intellectual community. My committee is the stuff of dreams. Evelyn Alsultany has been my anchor, confidante, mentor, and an incisive reader of my work. Nadine Naber challenged me, cheered me, and championed my research when I was unsure of its importance or its worth. Sarita See taught me how to read closely, how to demystify graduate school, and how to find the humor in the macabre. Victor Mendoza’s generative feedback, his critical eye, and capacious heart have shaped my scholarship. They have each inspired me to do more, to be better, and to keep it moving. My ongoing appreciation to the University of Michigan-Flint, particularly Jami Anderson, Stevens Wandmacher, and the writing center folks—they are the roots of my scholarly career, and should be blamed accordingly. Any AC graduate student worth their salt knows how truly lost they’d be without Marlene Moore, Tabitha Rohn, and the AC staff kicking butt behind the scenes. It was a total pleasure and gift to talk to Jesus Barraza and Amer Shomali about their work. My gratitude to Rabab Al Saffar, who assisted me in my research on Samia Gamal. I’m also grateful for the financial support granted to me by Rackham, the departments of American Culture and Near Eastern Studies, the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching. iii This project has been a labor of love. I have been loved and held by so many during the past six years, and without their support, I could not have imagined starting, let alone finishing, a Ph.D. First and foremost, to my family: Mr. B, Maryoomti, Lubnah, Maysoun, Lemma, Farid, and my sweet babies. Where would I be without you? Without your constant ribbing, your joyous laughter, your cooking, your beauty? What you have given me is beyond measure. I am in the wonderful position of having a family that I not only love, but like a hell of a lot. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for liking me. Thank you for helping me do this. In addition to the Shomalis, I want to extend my deep gratitude to my chosen family: all my writing and work buddies over the years, my AC/SI cohort, the #YpsiStrong crew, my Flint Family, the Sister Wives, the Feelings Committee, the Cliterati. I don’t know why we’re compelled to name all our friend groups, but I’m super into it and into each of you—you know who you are! You made me laugh until my face ached, you read my work when I couldn’t stand to look at it anymore, you comforted me in the utterly maudlin Michigan winter, and you drank me right under the table. Thank you for laughing at my jokes, complimenting my lipstick and my look, and being brilliant friends. There are also a few folks who escaped/reside outside the scope of Michigan who have been instrumental to my well-being: Anand, Andy, April, Brooke, Caroline, Charlotte, Darren, Dédé, Jessica, Lynn, and Umayyah. Thank you for traveling with me and for giving me a home in so many places. Kristopher, thank you for sharing my commitment to three-hour phone conversations, the USPS, and righteous indignation. Finally, to Palestine, my heart. Falasteen, I carry you with me always. This project is also for us—may we live and love free. iv Table of Contents Dedication....................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................iii List of Figures................................................................................................................................ vi Abstract......................................................................................................................................... vii Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 Dancing Queen: Denial and Desire in Golden Era Egyptian Cinema.......................... 37 Chapter 2 A Thousand and One Scheherazades: the Life and Times of a Literary Muse............ 90 Chapter 3 Scheherazade and the Limits of Inclusive Politics in Arab American Literature ...... 124 Chapter 4 Lipstick and Liberation: Leila Khaled and the Struggle for Transnational Solidarity158 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 193 v List of Figures Figure 1: Photo by Eddie Adams, Associated Press, 1969 186 Figure 2: Photo by Eddie Adams, Associated Press, 1969 186 Figure 3: Poster by Ghassan Kanifani, PFLP, 1968 187 Figure 4: Photo by Eddie Adams, Associated Press, 1970 187 Figure 5: Leila Khaled Mixed Media on Panel by Erin Currier, 2010 188 Figure 6: The Icon Installation by Amer Shomali, 2011 189 Figure 7: The Icon Silkscreen Print by Amer Shomali, 2011 189 Figure 8: Sobreviviendo Screen Print by Jesus Barraza, 2004 190 vi Abstract Moving Femininities focuses on three diverse and eminent figures of Arab femininity: the Golden Era Egyptian belly dancer Samia Gamal (1924-1994), the pan-Arab storyteller of The Thousand and One Nights, Scheherazade, and the Palestinian revolutionary Leila Khaled (b. 1944). By examining Arab and Arab American representations of each figure, my research demonstrates how Arab femininity is repurposed and remade by Arab and Arab American writers and artists struggling to represent Arab cultures against racism and Orientalism, all while remaining “authentically” Arab. I perform close readings of Gamal, Scheherazade, and Khaled in film, literature, and visual culture respectively; archival research, conducted in Egypt, Palestine, and the US provide cultural and historical context for my analysis. The project reveals how colonial logics limit the representations of femininity and produce a normative, narrow vision of Arab sexuality. My analysis reveals how Arab responses to colonialism and Orientalism have informed the representation of sexual and gendered norms; by destabilizing the representations of gender, sexuality, and race in these figures, I am able to locate subversive performances of gender and sexuality across their texts. As such, my work is a feminist and queer of color intervention in the scholarship on and representations of Arab gender and sexuality. Moreover, this dissertation examines how nations of origin affect those in the diaspora and how those in diaspora inform the home culture. Moving Femininities thus traces the movement of Arab vii cultures across national lines, the political movements enabled by attention to and regulation of femininity, and the new movements we might imagine for our queer Arab futures. viii Introduction I began this project with a very clear mission: to explore, narrate, or otherwise draw attention to the lives of queer Arabs living in the US. I wanted to know how non-normativity manifested in Arab communities, how desire looked and felt, how one might be queer and Arab and OK all at the same time. What I learned almost immediately, is that while Arab American cultural production is flourishing, and texts that deal explicitly with queer content certainly exist, the materiality and possibility of “queer Arab America” eluded me. Perhaps it was the terms at hand—the vast capacity of Arab, the over-signified and simultaneously unclear content of queerness, the exclusivity and exceptionalism of the United States of “America.” To think about queerness in Arab/American culture, I could not in fact, look directly toward LGBT articulations of Arab culture produced in the context of the US. Aside from the dearth of such representations, it was also the case that the categories lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender did not always find traction in Arab and Arab American representations of sexuality. While a variety of gender performances and desire practices exist within Arab representations, I had to decenter the search for LGBT identity and broaden my scope; the representation of sexuality became richer and more nuanced when I looked at that which surrounded, obfuscated, and sometimes foreclosed explicit LGBT production. In order to understand how gender and sexuality were produced in representation, I zoomed out: to trace the racialization of Arabs in the US; to understand that 1 within an ongoing colonization of the Arab world by the US, Israel, and its other interlocutors; to consider how anti-racist and anti-Orientalist efforts within the US shaped Arab/American discourses of gender and sexuality; to articulate how anti-colonial and post-colonial efforts within the Arab world shaped those same discourses; and finally, to imagine a future in which it was indeed, OK, to be queer and Arab, in any place. Moving Femininities: Queer Critique and Transnational Arab Culture examines representations of gender and sexuality

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