Growing Better, Not Going Faster
World War I, Holy Land Mania, and Transnational Exchange in the Works of Abraham Mitrie Rihbany
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11272038 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nora Eltahawy (City Colleges of Chicago, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 46 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 64-86 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlab022 |
| OpenAlex | W3169396467 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 17 |
This article analyzes the three works published by Arab American theologian and author Abraham Mitrie Rihbany during and in the aftermath of World War I: Militant America and Jesus Christ (1917), America Save the Near East (1918), and Wise Men from the East and from the West (1922). The political climate in which Rihbany wrote the works saw the American public grappling with two issues of particular relevance to the steadily growing Arab American community. Where the global front was concerned, debates on the merits of abandoning isolationist policies, which focused near exclusively on the situation in Europe, left Americans oblivious to the ongoing conflict between the Ottoman Empire and its Arab subjects. On the domestic front, rising levels of xenophobia and the lasting legacy of The Naturalization Act divided legal and public opinion on Arabs’ eligibility for citizenship. Situating Rihbany’s attempts to address both of these problems against the backdrop of his upbringing in Greater Syria, this article reveals how Rihbany called on his training in the cosmopolitan era of the Nahda in order to guide the American public toward a more expansive model of transnationalism capable of encompassing both Arabs and Arab Americans in its fold
Citizenship · Empire · Front (military) · Geography · Middle East · Militant · Militarism · Naturalization · Peacemaking · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Transnationalism · Xenophobia · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · Islamic Studies and History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law
Printing Arab Modernity
The Eastern Mediterranean and the Making of Global Radicalism, 1860-1914
American Palestine
Epic Encounters
The Making of Arab Americans
Between Arab and White
After Said
Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and American National Security
American “Welfare Politics”
He Has Made the Dry Bones Live
By Dens of Lions
The Color of Christ
Orientalism and the Construction of American Identity in Abraham Mitrie Rihbany's A Far Journey
From Nostalgia to Critique
The Production of Nativity in Early Syrian Immigrant Literature
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |