Arab American Studies Association Workshop: Teaching Arab American Studies in Times of Peril

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Professional Development Format

Abstract

What does it mean to teach Arab American Studies amid waves of government assault on migration, critical race theory, pro-Palestine speech, and initiatives of diversity, equity, and inclusion? This professional development workshop addresses the unique challenges and opportunities in teaching Arab American Studies during contemporary sociopolitical turmoil in the United States. Participants with various teaching backgrounds at public and private higher education institutions will discuss classroom challenges, pedagogical innovations, and strategies for addressing institutional censorship.

The workshop will feature five presentations, each focusing on different aspects of teaching Arab American Studies. The first presentation focuses on pedagogical innovations in teaching Arab American literature, emphasizing the role of Arab American comic books, graphic novels, and image narratives in tackling themes of war, dispossession, and identity formation in a transnational context. The second presentation proposes an interdisciplinary approach to teaching power, inequality, and social justice, incorporating Arab American voices and experiences. The third presentation addresses a pedagogical approach that focuses on trauma and memory in teaching contexts of violence, such as the Nakba, Lebanese Civil War, and Syrian revolution, and their impacts on Arab peoples in their homelands and diasporas. The fourth presentation discusses a cultural approach to teaching experiences of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia that offers practical advice on transcending censorship. The last presentation features insights from a graduate student navigating the precarity of student life and the demand for rigorous learning.

The workshop will discuss methods to foster critical reading and independent research skills while introducing the principles of self-directed learning and building background knowledge. It will dwell on pedagogical frameworks that promote critical and collaborative learning, transparent teaching practices, and accommodating different learning styles. Additionally, the workshop will emphasize the importance of intersectional and transnational frameworks for understanding war and violence and advocating for collective healing, remembrance, resilience, and resistance. In addition to presentations, the workshop will include a lengthy Q&A session, allowing participants to share their thoughts and experiences. This will be an opportunity to discuss classroom challenges and potential solutions and explore further pedagogical innovations and strategies for an inclusive learning environment in Arab American studies.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Waleed F. Mahdi, University of Oklahoma

Panelists

• Waleed F. Mahdi, University of Oklahoma

• Layla A Goushey

• Linda Sayed

• Natalie G El-Eid, Georgetown University

• Deena Z Naime, University of Southern California

Biographical Information

Natalie El-Eid specializes in contemporary transnational literatures and cultures of the Arab world, focusing her research on diverse and interdisciplinary textualizations of transnational Arab identities, cultures, and lived experiences across racial and ethnic frameworks and solidarities. In her current book project, titled “Druze Afterlives: Between Bodies and Borders,” Natalie calls attention to transnational Druze communities, most notably to their fundamental belief in reincarnation, as an intervention into the fields of transnational, Arab American, memory, and trauma studies of the U.S. and the Global South. In her work, Natalie introduces the concept of "Druze afterlives" to provide a new way of understanding how empire, war, trauma, memory, and gender intersect within and across the borders, bodies, and stories of the transnational Arab world, particularly in relation to what she frames as the “ongoing Lebanese Civil War.” Natalie is currently the American Druze Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. She is a former instructor of Women’s & Gender studies and a Graduate Research Associate in the Middle Eastern Studies Program at Syracuse University, where she earned her PhD in English.

Layla Azmi Goushey is a Professor of English at St. Louis Community College in St. Louis, Missouri. She holds an M.A. in History, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, a Ph.D. in Education: Teaching and Learning Processes, and two graduate certificates in American History and the Teaching of Writing. Dr. Goushey currently serves as the Secretary of the Arab American Studies Association. Her academic research specializes in Arab, Arab American, Sudanese, and South Caucasus literature and history. As a creative writer, her work has been published in journals such as Mizna, Sukoon, FIYAH, and Strange Horizons. Her story "The Heart Knows the Truth" was recently featured in Thyme Travellers: An Anthology of Palestinian Speculative Fiction. Dr. Goushey has also contributed to popular media outlets like The Middle East Eye and Patheos Muslim. She is the editor of Baladi Magazine. You can follow her on X (@lgoushey and/or @BaladiMagazine) or visit her website at LaylaAzmiGoushey.com.

Waleed F. Mahdi is an associate professor and co-director of Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. He is a recipient of several national and international awards. His peer-reviewed work appears in top-tiered journals, including American Quarterly, Journal of American Ethnic History, and Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. His recent book, Arab Americans in Film: From Hollywood and Egyptian Stereotypes to Self-Representation (Syracuse University Press, 2020), examines how Arab American belonging is constructed, defined, and redefined across Hollywood, Egyptian, and Arab American cinemas. He also guest-edited special issues and completed a multi-institutional research collaboration with Columbia University, the University of Jordan, and the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies. Waleed has been elected President of the Arab American Studies Association for a two-year term (2024-2025).

Deena Ziad Naime is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Her dissertation is tentatively titled “Sobhiyat w Zyarat: Generations of Druze Feminism Through Shared Spaces, Emotional Intimacy, and Care (Work).” Her project centers women’s spaces fostered in Druze communities in the Levant and the North American diaspora in order to theorize the concept of Druze feminism – as well as the cultivation of spaces of intimacy and care among women as a potentially radical intervention in feminist research methodology. Naime also holds an MA in Women’s Studies from San Diego State University, where she wrote her thesis on Arab American women’s disruption of mainstream “self-care” vis-á-vis U.S. neoliberal capitalism.

Linda Sayed is an associate professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics at James Madison College (JMC) at Michigan State University. She is a core faculty member of the Muslim Studies Program, and affiliate faculty of the Center of Gender in Global Context, and the Global Studies Program. She holds a master’s degree in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies from Columbia University. Professor Sayed is an interdisciplinary scholar of the contemporary Middle East and the Arab diaspora. Her research focuses on the politics of citizenship as it relates to marginalized communities, refugee rights, health care accessibility, and systems of national and international governance that inform global public health concerns in the Middle East and among Arab communities in the United States.