American Arabesque

Arabs and Islam in the Nineteenth Century Imaginary

Bibliographic Data

ID19970952
AuthorsJacob Rama Berman (corresponding author)
Year2012
Pages288
Publication date2012-06-11
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueAmerican arabesque (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherNew York University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.18574/nyu/9780814789506.001.0001
OpenAlexW2498506486
Open LibraryOL25115714M
ISBN9780814789506
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited2

American Arabesque examines representations of Arabs, Islam and the Near East in nineteenth-century American culture, arguing that these representations play a significant role in the development of American national identity over the century, revealing largely unexplored exchanges between these two cultural traditions that will alter how we understand them today.Moving from the period of America’s engagement in the Barbary Wars through the Holy Land travel mania in the years of Jacksonian expansion and into the writings of romantics such as Edgar Allen Poe, the book argues that not only were Arabs and Muslims prominently featured in nineteenth-century literature, but that the differences writers established between figures such as Moors, Bedouins, Turks and Orientals provide proof of the transnational scope of domestic racial politics. Drawing on both English and Arabic language sources, Berman contends that the fluidity and instability of the term Arab as it appears in captivity narratives, travel narratives, imaginative literature, and ethnic literature simultaneously instantiate and undermine definitions of the American nation and American citizenship

Aesthetics · American literature · Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Citizenship · Ethnic group · Historiography · Identity (music) · Islam · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Psychoanalysis · Sociology · The Imaginary · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics · Psychology · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies · 19th century · American National characteristics · Arabs · Arabs in literature · History and criticism · Islam in literature · National characteristics, american · National characteristics, American, in literature · Race identity

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