Notes on Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies (Introduction and Thematic Framing)

Publication context and aims

• Book: Sajjilu Arab American: A Reader in SWANA Studies (2022), Syracuse University Press
• Editors/Contributors mentioned: Cainkar, Pauline Homsi Vinson, Amira Jarmakani; Project MUSE hosting and University of Michigan @ Ann Arbor reference
• Core idea: tell the story of Arab American studies not as a single defining account but as a narrative that reflects complexity, tensions, and richness of the field
• Metaphor: storytelling as origin stories; aim to disrupt and build on narrative logics to stimulate conversation about field formation and future directions
• Quote framing: “Mostly my stories choose me, I do not choose them” (Majaj 2007) to underscore the field’s organic growth and contested histories
• The introduction emphasizes balancing coherence (beginning–middle–end) with the “messiness” of real histories, recognizing shifts in perspective and temporal anomalies
• Structure rationale: begin with dominant themes and narratives, then critique problems with origin stories, and finally outline a thematic organization that foregrounds cycles, disruptions, continuities, and divergences
• Authors’ personal scholarly trajectories are used to contextualize three major obstacles to field formation (see section below)

Origins, obstacles, and organizing rationale

• Major obstacles to field formation highlighted:
  • Resistance to rendering Arab Americans as racialized
  • Climate of censorship around Palestine and broader Arab issues
  • Politicized surveillance and policing affecting communities
• The introduction links these obstacles to broader debates about how to name, classify, and study Arab Americans within US race and ethnic studies
• Acknowledges that Arab American studies is nested within, and intersects with, US Muslim studies, SWANA studies, and broader race/ethnicity, migration, and transnational fields

Content framing and scope

• The authors note the importance of decolonizing geographies and recognizing the historic invisibility and hypervisibility dynamics around Arab American studies
• The cover image (Elaine Hagopian) is chosen to symbolize resistance to box-like categorization and to invoke state surveillance and control mechanisms (passports, FBI files, border crossings)
• The cover’s dual halves (color versus grayscale) symbolize instability and openness to alternative possibilities
• The reader foregrounds Arab American studies’ intersections with US Muslim studies, SWANA studies, Asian American, transnational, race/ethnic, migration, and Indigenous studies
• The reader aims to be useful across disciplines and courses, including SWANA diasporas and the broader political, social, and cultural contexts

Goals and process of the reader

• Goals:
  • Communicate key works in the field
  • Highlight complexities and paradoxes in discussions
  • Invite conversations not yet imagined
• Thematic organization is designed to be clusters rather than teleological narratives to stimulate debate and avoid producing uniformity or linearity
• Organizing decisions and process:
  • Review a range of syllabi from scholars teaching Arab American studies and related fields
  • Read broadly across the growing SWANA/Arab American scholarship
  • Acknowledge conflation of Arabs and Muslims in popular culture and policy discourse
  • Develop themes and gaps to guide essay selection
• Inclusion strategy:
  • Aims to honor foundational work while adding new scholarship that challenges elisions or orthodoxies
  • Uses a relational, layered approach: (1) weave early work into the introduction and section descriptions; (2) include essays that cite and build on earlier work; (3) present new scholarship
  • Pre-published essays were trimmed with ellipses indicated to show cuts
  • Emphasizes interdisciplinarity and usefulness to scholars across multiple domains

Overview of the field and critique of linear narratives

• Dominant, linear/“wave” narratives are US-focused and time-ordered, emphasizing early migration from Greater Syria, social mobility, institution-building, and generational change
• Key historical markers and policies shaping the field include:
  • Immigration patterns and quotas, Great Depression, WWII, and a later revival with policy shifts
  • 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, 1980 Refugee Act, 1990 Diversity Visa Lottery
  • Post-1967 shifts: Arabs as racialized, contrasted with Israelis as “people like us,” fostering an us/them binary and stereotypes
  • Mass media tropes of the “Arab terrorist” and accompanying surveillance and policing (e.g., Operation Boulder, 1974)
• Structural critique of the wave model:
  • It obscures intra-group differences and the long history of racialization, exclusion, and civil rights struggles
  • It risks erasing the broader global imperial and geopolitical contexts that shape Arab experiences in the Americas
• Notable organizational history and growth after 9/11: rising scholarship, more scholars, and institutional formation despite hostile reception
  • Arab American Studies Association (AASA) founded in 2012
  • Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies (2013)
  • Critical Arab American Studies series at Syracuse University Press (2015)
• Demographic shifts post-9/11 and into the 21st century:
  • Continued growth of Arab migration to the United States, including large Iraqi, Egyptian, Yemeni, Syrian populations (2020 snapshot indicates Iraqis and Egyptians among the largest groups; see Migration Policy Institute data)
  • The 2017 policy environment under Trump’s Muslim Ban restricted entry for some groups and affected mobility and displacement
• The field’s orientation toward interdisciplinarity and transnationalism:
  • Emphasizes cross-disciplinary approaches (race/ethnic studies, gender and sexuality, literary studies, etc.)
  • Recognizes transnational diasporic linkages and historical homelands embedded in the Americas (transnational homelands concept)
• Emphasis on transnational and global perspectives:
  • Scholars like Fadda, Civantos, Shohat, Karam, Quintanilla, Mogannam contribute to broader SWANA/MENA movements and diasporas beyond national borders
  • The reader advocates a broader, less US-centric view of racialization and empire

The six thematic clusters (six themes) in Arab American Studies

• Theme 1: Legibility and naming
  • Explores how Arabs and Arab Americans have been named, registered, and imagined in policy and culture
  • Addresses questions of racialization, visibility, and the politics of naming within U.S. society
• Theme 2: Migration and transnational configurations
  • Readings balance canonical narratives (e.g., Alixa Naff’s “The Early Arab Immigrant Experience”) with critical counter-narratives (e.g., Charlotte Karem Albrecht’s “Narrating Arab American History: The Peddling Thesis”) to reveal silences and alternative histories
  • Highlights how migration is not a uniform process and how different waves carry distinct experiences and challenges
• Theme 3: Racialization and the limits of liberal multiculturalism
  • Examines how liberal multiculturalism falls short in addressing structural racism and imperial dynamics
  • Analyzes how Arab Americans have been racialized, occasionally as white while also facing anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism
• Theme 4: Representation and epistemological formations
  • Investigates epistemologies of knowledge production about Arabs and SWANA communities in the Americas
  • Considers how representation constructs knowledge and how power shapes what counts as legitimate knowledge
• Theme 5: Imperialism and the war on terror
  • Connects structural racism, Islamophobia, and empire to policies and world events that shape Arab American experiences
  • Contextualizes the war on terror within longer histories of US imperial projects and global power dynamics
• Theme 6: Solidarity and intersectionalities across movements for justice among people of color
  • Explores forgotten and ongoing solidarities among Indigenous, Black, Arab, South Asian, Asian, and Latinx communities
  • Emphasizes cross-movement coalitions for social justice and equality
• Cross-cutting notes:
  • The six themes are intentionally interwoven; essays placed in one theme may engage with others, reflecting overlap and the interconnected nature of these topics
  • The thematic framing aims to move beyond linear narratives toward a transdisciplinary, dialogic form of scholarship
• Methodological choices underpinning the themes:
  • Inclusion of queer, critical race, disability, and transnational studies perspectives
  • Engagement with decolonial theory and critical analyses of US imperialism (e.g., Vijay Prashad’s “darker nations” framework)
• Examples of comparative readings within themes:
  • In migration, pairing Alixa Naff with Charlotte Karem Albrecht to foreground both dominant and silenced histories
  • In imperialism, tying structural racism and Islamophobia to empire and global power structures
• Transnational emphasis and beyond-US focus:
  • Recognition that US race/ethnic studies must engage with diaspora experiences across the Americas and beyond
  • Inclusion of Central and South American SWANA movements and communities (e.g., works by Civantos, Shohat, Karam, Quintanilla, Mogannam) to illustrate broader regional and cross-border linkages

A note on artificial divisions and reader’s intended conversations

• The editor acknowledges that thematic clustering can create artificial divisions where topics overlap
• The reader invites readers to generate conversations across sections and themes, using the six clusters as launching pads rather than rigid compartments

Further considerations and gaps highlighted by the editors

• Methodological biases of the selection process:
  • Tends to emphasize topics with rapid growth in scholarship (e.g., American studies) while giving less visibility to more quantitative fields (sociology, political science)
• A call for continued exploration beyond the volume’s scope and for engagement with additional important scholarship from authors included and not included
• Notable gaps identified:
  • Social class and its intra-group variations receive relatively limited treatment within the volume
  • The need to disaggregate Arab Americans from Whites to better capture intra-national origin and group differences
• Key empirical findings cited to illustrate class, religion, and regional variation in racial identification:
  • The Detroit Arab American Study Team (2009): 73% of Arab and Chaldean Christians identified as white vs. 50% of Muslims
  • Read (2008) Texas studies: only 5% of Muslim Arab Americans identified as White (vs. 34% of Christian Arab Americans)
  • Amaney Jamal (2005): Muslims who worship in mosques are more likely to be politically engaged locally and nationally than those who are not
  • Randa Kayyali (2018): wealthier, Christian Arab Americans in suburbs were more likely to identify as white, challenging assumptions about Muslim identity and whiteness
• Religion and social class interplay:
  • Arab Americans are religiously diverse and cannot be simplistically categorized by religion
  • Religion interacts with class and regional context in shaping racial identification and experiences of discrimination
• Health research and data gaps:
  • Arab American health research is present but hampered by a lack of demographic categorization in data collection
• The editorially implied takeaway:
  • Readers should consider how class, religion, congregational membership, and local contexts shape racial identification and experiences of bias, discrimination, and belonging

Key references and examples mentioned within the introduction (to guide deeper study)

• The wave model critiques and historical context:
  • Edges of whiteness and racialization traced through 19th–20th century history and imperialist affiliations (contextualized against Said, Shohat & Stam, and others)
• Notable figures and sources mentioned for further reading:
  • Mahmoud Darwish, Identity Card poem (sajjil/سجل): origin of the book’s title concept; Darwish’s line about registering Arab identity
  • Darwish’s 1964 Awraq al-zaytun (Olive Leaves) and English translations by Hilmy (2017)
  • Concept of a passive state registry and surveillance as an ongoing political concern
  • Gualtieri and Vinson (2018) on moving beyond a strict wave model in Arab immigration studies
  • Nixon-era security policies (Operation Boulder) and the broader critique of state surveillance as a means of enforcing racialized control

Overall takeaway for study preparation

• The reader aims to replace a linear, teleological history of Arab American studies with a thematic, interdisciplinary, and transnational account that foregrounds legibility, migration, racialization, representation, imperialism, and solidarities
• It critically analyzes how historical silences, state power, media representations, and policy changes intersect to shape Arab American experiences
• It emphasizes ongoing debates about whiteness, racial categorization, and the limits of liberal multiculturalism, while highlighting the growth of the field and the need for more nuanced data on class, religion, and regional variations
• It invites readers to treat the volume as a starting point for conversation and further research rather than a closed canon, encouraging cross-disciplinary dialogue and sustained inquiry into the evolving field