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dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1951/59734
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11401/71300
dc.description.sponsorshipThis work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.en_US
dc.formatMonograph
dc.format.mediumElectronic Resourceen_US
dc.language.isoen_US
dc.publisherThe Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
dc.typeThesis
dcterms.abstractThe genre of Arab American novels has experienced a veritable boom in the last decade, which opens up a wide field of questions concerning the aesthetics and politics of Arab American literature in a post 9/11 U.S. context. In my thesis, I propose that Arab/Muslim American women writers employ varying forms of auto-orientalism to gain access to the U.S. literary market via citation of orientalist tropes and thus actively participate in the majority discourses surrounding Islam, Muslim women and Americanness. Citation of established orientalist tropes provides access to publication by way of its mutual legibility by majority discourses and minority writers. While such citation can easily confirm existing stereotypes, it might also work as a space for contestation and subversion of a binary/feminized orientalist reference. Even though the most common form of auto-orientalism is an essentialist type in the popular `oppressed Muslim women memoirs', I argue that a recent wave of Arab American novels challenges East/West binaries by squarely placing Islam within and as part of American culture via strategic auto-orientalist references. In this analysis I look at Mohja Kahf's novel the girl in the tangerine scarf and her poetry collection Emails from Scheherazad as examples of such a strategic form of auto-orientalism in search of its characteristics, transformative possibilities, and potential impact on American audiences. I build on Christina Civantos, Stuart Hall and Gayatri Spivak and conclude that a strategic form of auto-orientalism can be part of a discursive intervention and relinking of meanings around Muslim womanhood in America. Further, I connect Kahf's strategies with an alternative women of color feminist framework, because her work opens possibilities for Muslim American women's subjectivities in the in-between, as cultural mediators that defy East/West binaries and thus destabilize a clear cut notion of a stable U.S. culture based on normativity and escape a neoliberal logic of validating only certain kinds of diversity.
dcterms.available2013-05-22T17:34:56Z
dcterms.available2015-04-24T14:46:55Z
dcterms.contributorHesford, Victoriaen_US
dcterms.contributorDiedrich, Lisaen_US
dcterms.contributorTan, E.K..en_US
dcterms.creatorKoegeler, Martina
dcterms.dateAccepted2013-05-22T17:34:56Z
dcterms.dateAccepted2015-04-24T14:46:55Z
dcterms.dateSubmitted2013-05-22T17:34:56Z
dcterms.dateSubmitted2015-04-24T14:46:55Z
dcterms.descriptionDepartment of Comparative Literatureen_US
dcterms.extent93 pg.en_US
dcterms.formatMonograph
dcterms.formatApplication/PDFen_US
dcterms.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/1951/59734
dcterms.identifierKoegeler_grad.sunysb_0771M_10948en_US
dcterms.identifierhttp://hdl.handle.net/11401/71300
dcterms.issued2012-05-01
dcterms.languageen_US
dcterms.provenanceMade available in DSpace on 2013-05-22T17:34:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Koegeler_grad.sunysb_0771M_10948.pdf: 734804 bytes, checksum: ba6cdc97cd8c6988470bde6201ebaed7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 1en
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dcterms.publisherThe Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.
dcterms.subjectComparative literature--Women's studies--American studies
dcterms.subjectArab American writers, Auto-orientalism, Ethnic Literature, Muslim feminism, Scheherazade, Women of Color feminism
dcterms.titleAmerican Scheherazades - Auto-orientalism, literature and the representations of Muslim women in a post 9/11 U.S. context
dcterms.typeThesis


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