Writing Amrika: Literary Encounters with America in Arabic Literature

Abstract

My dissertation, Writing Amrika: Literary Encounters with America in Arabic Literature is an examination of this cross-cultural literary encounter primarily through fictional prose written in Arabic from the beginning of the 20th century into the 21st century. The texts studied in this dissertation are set in America, providing a unique entry point into questions about how Arab authors choose to represent Arab characters experiencing their American surroundings. While each text is treated as a unique literary production emerging from a contingent historical moment, an attempt is made to highlight the continuities and ruptures that exist in both the content and form of these texts spanning a century of the Arab literary experience with America. I argue that this body of literature can be understood through its own literary history of the American encounter in Arabic literature; a literary history in dialogue with an East-West encounter that has more frequently represented the western 'Other' through European characters and locales. In focusing on the process of identification by Arab characters in America this dissertation argues that the American encounter initiates a particular ambivalence resulting in multiple, and often contradictory, identifications on behalf of the Arab characters which result in poignant crises and strained narrative resolutions.