Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, we explore the extent to which Detroit-area Black and White Americans endorsed or rejected stereotypes of Arab Americans in 1992 to assess how Arab Americans fit into the current racial hierarchy in the United States. We assess respondents' rankings of Arabs vis-à-vis other racial groups (e.g. how Whites rank Arabs, compared to how they rank Blacks, compared to how they rank themselves) on a seven-point scale for each of five dimensions: wealth, intelligence, work ethic, compatibility with others, and ability to speak English. In addition, we conduct multivariate analyses to estimate the independent effect of race after considering demographic and socioeconomic variables that differ for Whites and Blacks. We find that for each stereotype, White Americans view themselves most positively, Arab Americans more negatively than whites view themselves, and Black Americans most negatively. The patterns for Black Americans, however, are more complex. Arab Americans are between Whites and Blacks in terms of wealth and work ethic, but fall behind both White and Black Americans in their intelligence and ability to speak English. White and Arab Americans are equally difficult to get along with. Multivariate analyses show that even after accounting for demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, Blacks are still more likely than Whites to classify Arab Americans as wealthy, as difficult to get along with, and as speaking English poorly. Our future research plans include an investigation of whether the amount of contact that Black and White Americans have with Arab Americans affects their attitudes toward this group.

Publication Type: Internal Paper
Abstract: Cultural critic Stuart Hall argues that representational practices which can stereotype, reduce, naturalize and fix “difference” exercise what he calls “symbolic violence.” In fact, Arab dominant perspective on Hollywood’s representation of Arab Muslims and the Arab world is that, like its nation’s Middle-East policy, Hollywood deals with Islam as a threat and scripts Arabs/Muslims as essentially expendable people. This presentation proposes to explore how Hollywood, as a powerful entertainment institution that shapes and reflects the dominant thinking of American culture, largely perpetuates a dehumanizing ideology vis-à-vis the Arabs. I will especially concentrate on the work of reputedly liberal filmmakers such as Edward Zwick, David O. Russell, and Stephen Gaghan and their films The Siege (1998), Three Kings (1999) and Syriana (2005), respectively. My reading of these films will pay attention not so much to the films’ plots but to the use of point-of-view editing, mode of address and focalization, all of which serve to soften US foreign policy. By doing so, these films reveal not only the film industry’s complex relationship with US foreign policy but also the limits of liberalism and the “vestigial thinking” of colonial discourse, at the heart of which I can identify the struggle for hegemony as the driving force.
The second part of my presentation proposes to engage a contrapuntal perspective, to borrow a Saidian term, by examining Arab films’ representation of the US and its foreign policy. I will especially look at Arab films, such as Khairy Beshera, Amrica Abracadabra (1993), Youssef Chahine’s The Other (1999) and Khaled Youssef’s The Storm (2000). My reading of Arab films, while it puts forward a cinematic counter-telling and a more complex understanding of US-Arab encounters, still pinpoints the Arab cinematic tendency towards a monolithic representation of the US. Moreover, my analysis of Arab filmic representations of the US shows that Arab cinema articulates above all what film critics Ella Shohat and Robert Stam term “allegories of impotence” that probe the social, political and economic predicaments of the Arab nations.

Publication Type: Internal Paper
Abstract: U.S. film industry has been instrumental in freezing, advancing, and perpetuating Orientalist representations that have prevailed on the silver screen since the silent cinema era. U.S. screenwriters, and directors, as well as production corporations have resorted to problematicize the image of Arabs through constructing a Manichean paradigm of binary oppositions: sensuality, primitivity, greed, dishonesty, and terror are predominant qualities ascribed to Arabs in contrast with chastity, modernity, benevolence, honesty and peacefulness that characterize U.S. Americans. This Orientalist mode is best manifested in the films produced throughout the twentieth century by one of Hollywood’s leading corporations, Paramount Pictures whose films have depicted fictitious Arabs as strikingly different from, if not opposite to, actual Arabs. The question, which this paper seeks to probe, is: How can Orientalist cultural production be challenged?
In 2006, a transnational project was jointly carried out by the Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu, the Mexican screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, the Mexican cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, and the U.S.-based Film Corporation, Paramount Pictures. The project is known as Babel, a film concerned with issues of terrorism, immigration, and intercultural communication. It is one of the post 9/11 few attempts at depicting Arabs in a realistic, sympathetic manner in contrast to Hollywood’s earlier productions. Arabs, constituting an integral part in this multicultural film, are depicted differently. In addition to allowing first-time Arab locals to play major roles alongside with professional American actors and shooting the actions in a real locale in a Moroccan village rather than relying on any replicas, Arabs are portrayed more realistically. Their generosity, hospitality, and kindness to foreigners, particularly Americans, are highlighted in the film in a way that radically contrasts Paramount’s Arabs in earlier films, who are characterized by their sense of hatred, enmity, and hostility to Westerners. The film also criticizes U.S.-hyped anxiety over the issues of homeland security and global sovereignty, best reflected through the current discourse of terrorism of which Arabs are the immediate victims.
The central argument of this paper revolves around the challenge that such a transnational mode poses to Hollywood’s long problematic representation of Arabs. With a chronic tendency to vilify Arabs as villains and buffoons in its cinematic production, Paramount Pictures – appealing to an audience whose subconscious mind has been structured to predict such images – is experiencing a sudden change introduced by Latin Americans in Babel. The paper’s analysis stresses on the importance of such a transnational project in improving the images of the Other in U.S. cultural productions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Arab societies have experienced great economic and political changes in the second half of the 20th century. This is particularly true for Arab Gulf societies after the discovery of oil in the 1960's and the oil boom of the 1970's. Changes have touched upon all aspects of society, including people's values and perceptions. This study aims at exploring how economic changes have affected the people's perception and allocation of time. The study uses data collected from a sample of 209 citizens of the United Arab Emirates. In addition to the concept of time, the questionnaire yielded results concerning time allocated for daily activities, classified into four categories: necessary time, contracted time, committed time, and free time. This is not another study of who does what, and how long it takes. Time-use studies in the Arab World are very rare. The paper relates the results to the overall cultural changes which accompanied the passage of Arab Gulf societies from traditionalism to modernity.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The current study seeks to dispel monolithic representations of Arab American Families by showing realities of Arab American life through the lens of queer men and women living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I intend to utilize surveys, in-depth interviews and participant observation fieldwork. I will attempt to understand the ways in which queer Arab Americans navigate their lives in relation to their families. I will also seek to understand the ways in which families of origin respond to the queer/s in the family. By looking at the range of responses and the multiple ways of negotiating and changes over time we can arrive at a more nuanced understanding of Arab American families. Additionally, by looking at families that queer Arab Americans create we expand the limited understanding of what Arab American families look like. An important comparative component to this project is the study of similarities and differences between the experiences of queer Arab American men and women. I will be seeking to understand the intersections of gender and sexuality here. Some important questions which I seek to answer are “If families of origin respond differently to men than women with regard to their sexual transgression, how do they respond differently?” I also seek to understand if queer Arab men and women have similar or different resources or modes of dealing with family reactions.