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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.

The purpose of this thesis is to firmly situate the fictions of contemporary Arab British and Arab American women writers who write in English within the corpus of ethnic and mainstream literary criticism. I aim to position these fictions within their historical and sociopolitical contexts. I also aim to shift the focus from the texts’ female protagonists to male and minor characters in order to explore how the writers construct both political Islam and Islam as a private faith; how they construct Palestinian Muslim masculinities; and how they respond to the events of 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror. I argue that these fictions offer some of the most astute reactions to the events of 9/11 and their repercussions. I also argue that Arab American literature in general and Arab American women’s literature in particular is more canny than its Arab British counterpart. Thus, I aim to show how Arab American literary productions refract a development from the literature of self-exploration to that of transformation allowing them a well-deserved spot in Ethnic-American literary studies and in time, mainstream American literary studies. Another of my aims is to investigate how Arab American and Arab British writers highlight the diversity of Arabs, Muslims and Islam, thus addressing essentialist reductions of Arabs and Muslims as a monolithic group. In chapter one, I investigate how Ahdaf Soueif’s In the Eye of the Sun and Leila Aboulela’s Minaret negotiate issues such as Islamic clothing. I also question anew Arab women writers’ perceived role as “cultural commentators.” In chapter two, I explore how Laila Halaby’s West of the Jordan and Randa Jarrar’s A Map of Home construct Palestinian Muslim masculinities, and how they challenge the Anglo-American stereotypical representations of Arab Muslim masculinity. In chapter three, I analyse how Laila Halaby’s Once in a Promised Land, Frances Khirallah Noble’s The New Belly Dancer of the Galaxy and Alia Yunis’ The Night Counter negotiate cultural, political and social views of America. I aim to examine whether Halaby, Noble and Yunis’ ambiguous position, as legally ‘white’ citizens who are also members of a marginalized and religiously racialized minority, offers them a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between ‘East’ and ‘West.’ In the conclusion, I offer some suggestions for future research.

Becoming a young woman amid the foothills and valleys of the Appalachian Mountains has fulfilled me with an awareness that I am not from "around these parts" that I now find myself in. As I navigated my way across the mountains, to the southern slopes of the east coast, I began to realize the life I was leaving behind through the process of photography, film, and the act of making a recording. This document speaks about the ideas and persistent energy that drive my process of creation while focusing on three important bodies of work that exhibit what I believe to be a method of engagement between the body and the camera. Out of my experiences, I want to make record of the blips and intonations, and of the in-between spaces where language is displaced and the visual speaks for itself.

A gap exists in the literature regarding the needs, concerns, and overall experiences of Arab American parents of children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (Al Khatib, 2017; Goforth, 2011; Haboush, 2007). This study explored the experiences of five Arab American mothers of children with ASD. A qualitative interview approach, utilizing in-depth interviews, was used in order to investigate Arab American parents’ experiences of caring for children with ASD, their cultural beliefs and understandings of their children’s ASD, and their concerns and needs regarding their children. Six themes emerged from the interview data, which offered insight into Arab American parents’ unique experiences of caring for a child with ASD, including (1) parents’ journeys toward the acceptance of the diagnosis of ASD, (2) beliefs about the cause of autism, (3) concerns, (4) needs, (5) coping techniques, and (6) unanticipated positive effects. Findings of this study and aspects related to Arab cultural beliefs with the ASD diagnostic process are discussed in detail, as well as implications of the findings for the field of special education and recommendation for future research.

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the works of contemporary Arab British and Arab American women novelists with a view toward delineating a poetics of the more nascent Arab British literature. I argue that there is a tendency among Arab British women novelists to foreground and advocate trans-cultural dialogue and cross-ethnic identification strategies in a more pronounced approach than their Arab American counterparts who tend, in turn, to employ literary strategies to resist stereotypes and misconceptions about Arab communities in American popular culture. I argue that these differences result from two diverse racialized Arab immigration and settlement patterns on both sides of the Atlantic. Chapter One looks at how Arab British novelist Fadia Faqir's My Name is Salma and Arab American novelist Diana Abu-Jaber's Arabian Jazz define Arabness differently in the light of the precarious position Arabs occupy in ethnic and racial discourses in Britain and in the United States. Chapter Two examines how Arab British women writers Ahdaf Soueif and Leila Aboulela valorize trans-cultural and cross-ethnic dialogues and alliances in their novels The Map of Love and Minaret respectively through engaging with the two (interlocking) strands of feminism in the Arab world: secular and Islamic feminisms. In Chapter Three, I demonstrate how the two novels of Arab American women writers Diana Abu-Jaber's Crescent and Laila Halaby's West of the Jordan explore the contradictions of Arab American communities from within and employ strategies of intertextuality and storytelling to subvert stereotypes about Arabs. As this study is interested in exploring the historical and socio-political contexts in which Arab women writers on both sides of the Atlantic produce their work, the conclusion investigates how the two sets of authors have represented, from an Arab perspective, the events of 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror in their novels.

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Even within counseling psychology’s multicultural literature, attention to individuals of Arab descent remains narrow (Awad, 2010; Abdel-Salam, 2019). Despite counseling psychologists’ goals regarding multiculturally proficiency, the dearth of systematic empirical research on the counseling of Arab Americans remains conspicuous. The present study attempts to fill this gap by exploring the impact of racial ambiguity and legal invisibility on Arab Americans’ sense of belonging and well-being. This exploratory consensual qualitative research (CQR) investigation analyzed interview data from 13 non-veiled Arab American women. The interview probed their reactions to Arab Americans’ legal invisibility in the US, queried how they believed White people versus people of color racially perceived them, and examined their subsequent emotional responses and coping strategies. The study’s results revealed participants’ feelings of invisibility, invalidation, and hurt when they were not recognized as a person of color (PoC) and brought the participants’ perpetual experience of exclusion to the forefront. The results not only have implications for professional practice and education but also for policy. Specifically, this study lends support to Arab and Middle Eastern North African (MENA) advocacy efforts for census recognition, as this acknowledgment of the Arab/MENA community would foster a sense of belonging not only among other PoC but also within US society as a whole.

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