American arabesque : Arabs, Islam, and the 19th-century imaginary / Jacob Rama Berman.

By:

Berman, Jacob Rama [author.]

Material type: Text

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

9780814789513
081478951X
9780814723210
0814723217

Subject(s): Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: American arabesque.DDC classification:

810.9/3529927 23

LOC classification:

PS217.A72 B47 2012eb

Online resources:

EBSCOhost

Contents:

Introduction: Guest Figures -- The Barbarous Voice of Democracy -- Pentimento Geographies -- Poe's Arabesque -- American Moors and the Barbaresque -- Arab Masquerade : Mahjar Identity Politics and Trans-nationalism -- Afterword: Haunted Houses.

Summary: 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 Allan 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.

Holdings ( 1 )
Title notes ( 6 )

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
eBook	e-Library	EBSCO Social Science		Available

Total holds: 0

Includes bibliographical references and index.

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 Allan 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.

Print version record.

English.

Added to collection customer.56279.3