AMCULT 215 Exam

AMCULT 215 Exam 1

My Aesthetic Truly Lacks Emotional Maturity

Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania

I Saw Lions Jump Past

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine

Some Students Do Care

Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros

Seven Young Owls Usually Question and Kill Bold Monarchs

Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain

Colonialism

The conquest and control of other peoples land and goods

Race

Race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interest by referring to different types of human bodies (Omi and Winant, 1994)

Racialization

The extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice, or group (Omi and Winant, 1994)

Hegemony

Something that is (and the elites want to remain) dominant in society

A process that makes the dominance of one person/group/idea seem normal or natural

Maintained through coercion and consent

“Soft power”

Discourse

The hidden rigid set of rules that dictates what can and cannot be said, thought or known in any given historical era. Discourse determines what is considered rational and what is dismissed as madness

Orientalism

The corporate institution for dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it, authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over it: in short, Orientalism is a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (Said 3).

Periods of the 4 Waves

1870s to WW2

WW2 to 1965

1965 to 1990

1990 to present

Heteronormativity

Sex/gender binary and traditional gender roles, Insistence that heterosexuality is and must remain the norm, Heterosexual relationships and the nuclear family are considered superior, Patriarchal structure that privileges men/masculinity while subordinating women and gender/sexually non-conforming individuals

Orientalism (Gender Binary)

The West/Occident is constructed as masculine, rational, and dominant; the East/Orient is constructed as feminine, irrational, and submissive.

League of arab states

1. Algeria

2. Bahrain

3. Comoros

4. Djibouti

5. Egypt

6. Iraq

7. Jordan

8. Kuwait

9. Lebanon

10. Libya

11. Mauritania

12. Morocco

13. Oman

14. Palestine

15. Qatar

16. Saudi Arabia

17. Somalia

18. Sudan

19. Syria

20. Tunisia

21. United Arab Emirates (UAE)

22. Yemen

Imperialism

Imperialism is a global system originating in the metropole (power center) that asserts economic, political, and market dominance over foreign lands. unlike colonialism, imperialism can function with or without formal territorial colonies.

Arab

A cultural, linguistic, and ethnic identity belonging to people who originate from or identify with Arabic-speaking regions

Arab as a Racial Category vs. Racialized Category 

In the United States “Arab” is not an official federal census racial category (classified legally as “white”) but is a heavily racialized category through geographical framing, domestic surveillance, and orientalist media representations

Reasons for first wave migration

Suez canal opening: Allowed western europe to import cheaper silk from east and south asia faster which hurt local syrian/lebanese silk trade
Phylloxera Aphid Infestation: detroyed grape vineyards and local wine production
Cultural: “american dream” —> get rich quick and bring money back to Syria to support family

Little Syria

NYC neighborhood serving as a historical, press, and intellectual hub for early Syrian immigrants. This neighborhood was demolished to build the brooklyn battery tunnel and later the world trade center. This demonstrates how state development erased non-white immigrant history while upholding the hegemonic “ellis island” narrative as the primary immigration story

Obstacles to field formation

Struggles to render the field legible, resistance to framing arab americans as racialized, and a general climate of censorship in relation to work on Palestine and on Arabs more generally. The field suffered from academic illegibility as it did not fit cleanly into Eurocentric departmental studies / traditional Middle East / area studies. Official federal classifications that labeled arabs as “white” generated a refusal to recognize arab americans as a racialized group, and not recognizing their experiences with discrimination and state surveillance. The discipline faced pervasive political censorship, particularly surrounding scholarship on Palestine and the US foreign policy.

Peddling

Walking to sell goods from packs; primary early source of income for Syrian immigrants. Required minimal initial capital or english fluency which allowed newcomers to earn immediate cash income while traveling across urban and rural US routes

Peddling Thesis

Alixa Naff’s argument that pack peddling was the primary reason why syrian immigrants assimilated and americanized. Door-to-door sales allowed for rapid english language acquisition, exposed immigrants to american cultural values, and provided the capital needed to live the settled merchant life

Queer Ecology of Peddling

Formulated by Charlotte Karem Albrecht, the queer ecology of peddling views early Syrian door-to-door sales as an ecosystem of mobile trade, female boardinghouse labor, and non-traditional living arrangements. Rather than using "queer" as a modern LGBTQ+ identity label, it serves as an analytic showing how peddlers' transience, high female participation (up to 80%), and lack of property ownership disrupted white middle-class heteronormativity. Ultimately, it challenges Alixa Naff’s "Peddling Thesis" by arguing that Syrian immigrants achieved social acceptance not through peddling, but by stopping peddling to adopt settled, brick-and-mortar domesticity.

Syrian

The identifier used for the first wave arabic speaking immigrants ariving prior to WW2. They are from the ottoman province of greater syria which encompassed modern-day syria, lebanon, palestine/israel and jordan. Syrian was used because modern arab nation state borders did not exist until the post WW1 Sykes-picot agreement and european colonial mandates divided the region

How is knowledge an ideological accompinament to colonial power?

Knowledge is an ideological accompinanent to colonial power because the west had the power to construct narratives about the east. These narratives that were produced and spread throughout the european population were about how the east is barbaric or uncivilized and needs to be tamed by the west which provided justification for colonialism

Wave Models (and critiques of)

Categorizes arab migration through demographic arrival periods, distinguishing early pre-WW2 syrian/lebanese sojourners from later post WW2 cohorts. Scholars critiquw these models for imposing a eurocentric, linear narrative that erases non-linear movements, return migration and and alternative pathways like Arab Latinidad. Furthermore, the framework homogenizes diverse immigrant into monolithis categories, obscures how US imperialism and war drove displacement, and uses a “wave” metaphor that can inadvertetly align with nativist anxietyies about overwhelming immigrant influxes

Racial Project

Omi and Winant, Racial Formation. “A racial project is simultaneously an interpretation, representation, or explanation of racial dynamics, and an effort to re-organize and redistrbute resources along particular racial lines”

Racism

The state-sanctioned and/or extra-legal production and exploitation of group-differentiated vulnerability to premature death - Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Racial Formation

The process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings" - Omi and Winant

“Introduction” Sajjilu Arab american: A reader in SWANA

Publication date: 2022. Author: Cainkar, Homsi Vinson, and Jarmakani

“Situating Colonial and Postcolonial Studies” Colonialism/Postcolonialism

Publication date: 2005. Author: Loomba

“Structuring Migration: Moving Bodies and Shared Histories” Sajjilu Arab American: A reader in SWANA

Publication date: 2022. Author: Loomba

“The Early Arab Immigrant Experience” The Development of Arab American Identity

Publication date: 1994. Author: Alixa Naff

Possible Histories: Arab Americans and the Queer Ecology of Peddling.

Publication date: 2023. Author: Charlotte Karem Albrecht

“Race, Religion, and the Discourse on Multiculturalism.” Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies.

Publication Date: 2022. Author: Cainkar, Homsi Vinson, and Jarmakani.

Claiming Whiteness: Syrians and Naturalization Law.” Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies.

Publication Date: 2022 Author: Gualtieri

Strange Fruit? Syrian Immigrants, Extralegal Violence, and Racial Formation in the United States.” Race and Arab Americans Before and After 9/11

Publication Date: 2008 Author: Gualtieri

Sexuality (as it pertains to race)