Artistic Praxis, Insurgent Futures, and SWANA Diasporic Archives

Session Submission Type: Paper Session

Abstract

Collectively situated on the “peripheries” of American Studies, we ask how can artistic engagements in SWANA diaspora expose and upend the violent enclosures of imperial archives and historiography? The papers curated in this panel focus on SWANA archives and works by SWANA artists who insist on the anticolonial potential of archives as sites of counter-memory, insurgence, and worldmaking. In doing so, the panel moves across a variety of sites shaped by histories of imperial violence and resistive worldmaking in SWANA such as: a multimedia art project engaging with 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires during the first Gulf War; the Shangri La Museum for the Islamic Art, Culture, and Design in the settler colonial context of Honolulu, Hawai’i; archives of feeling and repertoire in US-based SWANA diasporic nightclubs; and shared memoryscapes of transnational Armenian and Palestinian creative communities. What are the generative possibilities of activating histories or making counter-archives of performance, dance, literature, and visual arts in ushering in otherwise historical knowledges, speculative modes of artistic creation, and decolonial temporalities? In posing these questions, we uplift the fact that many of the recent provocations in archive theory come to us by Arab, Palestinian, and SWANA artists and scholars and through critical engagements against intersecting histories of imperial violence. We also remain particularly attentive to the limits of the archive as an evidentiary source within settler colonial logics that justify the elimination of life forms and memory institutions, and when liberal humanist frameworks of international law and justice are deficient in their accountability to preserving lives. Similarly, the papers in the panel collectively gesture to critique understandings of empire in “stages” and move away from “America” as an exceptional site of imperialism. Rather we seek a more capacious understanding of empire as a global and mutating process of racialization that is a condition of possibility for racial capitalism and its future. Against the limiting forces of our present moment, this panel attunes to acts of archiving and memory-keeping as forms of witnessing and resistance against settler imperialism and colonial violence, and as a means for forging solidarities across SWANA geographies.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Individual Presentations

• Property as Settler Imaginary in Shangri La Museum - Nazli Akhtari, University of Waterloo

• SWANA Feminist Praxis and Sensorial Archives of the War-Climate Continuum - Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh, University of California-Riverside

• Memoryscapes, Archives, and Transnational Diasporic Solidarity: Armenian-Palestinian Interactions, Solidarities and Futures in Literature and Art - Layla A Goushey

• Dancing History in the Archival Body: The Past and Present of the SWANA Diaspora Nightclub - Meiver De la Cruz, N/A

Chair

• Nazli Akhtari, University of Waterloo

Biographical Information

Nazli Akhtari is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Waterloo. Her research broadly engages questions of critical historiography and minoritarian archives within the context of SWANA diaspora and empire. She is currently at work on two projects. The first is a book manuscript in progress on the queer archival work in contemporary image-making practices in the global Iranian diaspora. The second project funded by the SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2023-2025) considers the institutional inclusion of diasporic and minoritarian artistic practices in relation to the settler colonial project of empire across Turtle Island. She has published articles in Theatre Journal, Theater, Camera Obscura, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Global Performance Studies, and Performance Matters.

Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh (she/her) is an interdisciplinary scholar-artist and an Assistant Professor in Critical Dance Studies at the University of California, Riverside. Her research extends upon two decades as a dance-maker, artistic director, and dramaturg among diasporic SWANA (particularly Iranian American) communities. Heather earned her Ph.D. in Performance Studies from UC Berkeley with a Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Following her doctoral studies, she was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Dance Studies in the Department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University (2016 - 2018) and the University of California Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Asian American Studies at UC Davis (2018 – 2020). Heather’s research engages transnational feminist critiques of war and Euro-American empire through examining diasporic SWANA performances of refusal and futurity that are choreographically oriented toward undermining neocolonial structures of seeing, feeling, and knowing the “Middle East.” She is currently working on her first book manuscript, tentatively titled Choreographing the Iranian Diaspora: Dance, Spectatorship, and the Politics of Belonging, which was selected for the Dance Studies Association’s 2019 First-time Author Mentorship Program. Her publications include chapters in Futures of Dance Studies (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020); Performing Iran: Cultural Identity and Theatrical Performance (I.B. Tauris Press, 2021); Dance in the Persianate World: History, Aesthetics, and Performance (Mazda Press, 2023); and the Oxford Handbook of Dance Praxis (Oxford University Press, under review).

Layla Azmi Goushey (she/her) is a Professor of English at St. Louis Community College in St. Louis, Missouri. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, an M.A. in History, and a PhD in Adult Education: Teaching and Learning Processes. Her research interests include Palestinian American and Arab American education, history, literature, and culture. Dr. Goushey’s scholarly and creative work has been published in several journals. She is the editor of Baladi Magazine. Follow her on X @lgoushey and/or @BaladiMagazine.

Dr. Meiver De la Cruz (she/they) is a scholar, artist, and activist. De la Cruz has served as Visiting faculty at Whitman College (Gender Studies and Anthropology), Scripps College (Dance), Oberlin College (Gender Studies and Dance), among other institutions. As a scholar, she writes about diasporic movement practices as well as performance epistemologies in a global context. As an artist, she creates works addressing the intersections of diaspora politics, class, transnational racialization schemas, and gendered violence. She has published about gender violence in activist communities of color in the United States, and about dance and queer activism in Lebanon. De la Cruz has toured internationally as a dancer, worked with theater ensembles (English and Spanish), and performs work as a solo artist. De la Cruz has over 20 years of engagement in non-profit work, activism, gender justice, and engagement with social justice causes including housing advocacy, youth engagement through the arts, and organizing with immigrant and women of color groups. Currently she continues this work aimed at social transformation, serving as a Diversity Equity and Inclusion consultant with the organization Think Again Training and Consulting. De la Cruz holds a BA degree in Economics from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, a Master’s Degree from Simmons University in Gender and Cultural Studies, and a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University.