In her novel Arabian Jazz, Diana Abu-Jaber attempts to explore the Arab American identity as something new; as an identity that exists related to, but ultimately separate from, the Arab and American identities from which it was originally created. This thesis discusses the emergence of the depiction of the Arab American female identity in the novel, examining how the characters explore issues of race, class, imperialism, and sex within both the Arab and the American cultures as those issues shape female identity. The thesis also presents a rhetorical analysis of the speeches that allow the characters a voice with respect to how identity is shaped and reshaped throughout the novel.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Opposing the culture of différance created through American cultural media, this thesis argues, Arab hip-hop artists revive the politically conscious sub-genre of hip-hop with the purpose of normalising their Arab existence. Appropriating hip-hop for a cultural protest, Arab artists create for themselves a sub-genre of conscious hip-hop – Arab-conscious hip-hop and function as Gramsci’s organic intellectuals, involved in better representation of Arabs in the mainstream. Critiquing power dynamics, Arab hip-hop artists are counter-hegemonic in challenging popular identity constructions of Arabs and revealing to audiences biases in media production and opportunities for progress towards social justice. Their identity (re)constructions maintain difference while avoiding Otherness. The intersection of Arab-consciousness through hip-hop and politics of identity necessitates a needed cultural protest, which in the case of Arabs has been severely limited. This thesis progresses by reviewing literature on politics of identity, Arabs in American cultural media, Gramsci’s organic intellectuals and conscious hip-hop. Employing criticism, this thesis presents an argument for Arab hip-hop group, The Arab Summit, as organic intellectuals involved in mainstream representation of the Arab community.

The following paper examines the growing fear and discrimination currently projected towards Islam and Muslims in the United States. This thesis will specifically focus on what role the U.S. mainstream media has played in either increasing or decreasing Islamophobia amongst the American public post September 11, 2001. The research collected to conduct this study came from theories of political science, conflict resolution, international affairs, psychology, sociology, and personal interviews. I conclude that Islamophobia has increased in the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and that Islamophobia, due to the mainstream media, is more pervasive in the U.S. culture the initially assumed.

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This thesis argues that, from 1880 to 1935, Syrian immigrants, who comprised an enclave on the Lower West Side of Manhattan in New York City, sought to control the pace and extent of their assimilation into mainstream American society, by distancing themselves from their ethnicity, or by using their ethnicity to their advantage, or by combining both approaches to varying degrees, as they determined individually, rather than monolithically. / Includes bibliography. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2014. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection

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What are the perceptions, attitudes, and feelings of Arab-Muslim students about racism and prejudice towards their ethnicity and religious affiliation before September 11, 2001 and after?.

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This dissertation aims to contribute to the burgeoning field of Arab-American feminist critique through an exploration of the work of four contemporary Arab-American women poets: Etel Adnan (1925-), a poet and a visual artist and a writer, Naomi Shihab Nye (1952-), poet, a song writer, and a novelist, Mohja Kahf (1967-), a poet, an Islamic feminist critic and author, and Suheir Hammad (1973-), a hip-hop poet and political activist. The study traverses the intersections of stereotypical racial and Orientalist discourses with which these women contend, and which have been further complicated by being shaped against the backdrop of the “War on Terror” and hostility against Arabs, Muslims and Arab-Americans in the post-September 11 era. Hence, the study attempts to examine their poetry as a tool for resistance, and as a space for conciliating the complexities of their hyphenated identities. The last two decades of the twentieth-century saw the rise of a rich body of Arab-American women writing which has elicited increasing academic and critical interest. However, extensive scholarly and critical attention was mainly drawn to novels and non-fiction prose produced by Arab-American women writers as reflected in the huge array of anthologies, journal articles, book reviews and academic studies. Although such efforts aim to research and examine the racial politics that have impacted the community and how it relates to feminist discourses in the United States, they have rarely addressed or researched how the ramifications of these racialised politics and discourses are articulated in Arab-American women’s poetry per se. Informed by a wide range of postcolonial and United States ethnic theory and criticism, feminist discourses of women of colour such Gloria Anzaldúa's borderland theory, and Lisa Lowe's discussions of ethnic cultural formations in addition to transnational feminism, this study seeks to lay the groundwork for a complex analysis of Arab-American feminist poetics, based on both national and transnational literary approaches. The dissertation addresses the following questions: how does the genre of poetry negotiate identity politics and affiliations of belonging in the current polarized and historical moment? How do these women poets challenge the troubling oppressed/exoticised representations of Arab/Muslim women prevalent in the United States mainstream culture? How does each of these poets express their vision of social and political transformation? Emphasising the varying ethnic, religious, national, political, and cultural backgrounds and affiliations of these four poets, this dissertation attempts to defy any notion of the monolithic experience of Arab-American women, and argues for a nuanced understanding of specificity and diversity of Arab-American feminist experiences and articulations. To achieve its aim, the study depicts the historical evolution of Arab women’s poetry in the United States throughout four generations in order to examine the deriving issues and formative elements that contributed to the development of this genre, and also to pinpoint the defining characteristics marking Arab-American women poetry as a cultural production of American women of Arab descent. Through close readings and critical analyses of texts, the dissertation offers an investigation of some of the major themes and issues handled by these Arab-American women to highlight the most persistent tropes that mark this developing literary genre. Eventually, this study shows how literature, and specifically poetry becomes a conduit to investigate Arab-American cultural and sociopolitical conditions. It also offers productive explorations of identities and representations that transcend the rigid essential totalising categorisation of identity, while attempting to forge a new space for cultural translation and social transformation.