Arab American

The current study investigated pre-adolescents' and adolescents' attitudes about social exclusion based on cultural membership, specifically exclusion of individuals from Arab descent. Developmental intergroup research on the Arab cultural identity is sparse, and given this is a group that is highly associated with negative emotionally charged stereotypes in adults, it is important to understand the developmental origins of such attitudes. Questions about the role of stereotypes, cultural identity, shared interest in activities (e.g., hobbies), exclusive and inclusive group norms, and intergroup attributions of emotions in exclusion contexts were addressed. To answer these questions non-Arab American 12-and 16-year-olds (N =199) evaluated situations in which their own group and an Arab American group of peers made decisions about inclusion and exclusion. These decisions were about a cultural ingroup target with different interests in activities or a cultural outgroup target with the same interests in activities. Findings indicated that participants expected the Arab American group would make inclusion decisions based on the cultural identity of the target (a preference for cultural identity over shared interests) in contrast to their own non-Arab American group, which they expected would make decisions based on shared interest in activities (a preference for shared activities over cultural identity). This finding was perpetuated in groups that had exclusive group norms. Sixteen year-olds were less inclusive toward an outgroup member than 12-year-olds and participants who reported stereotypes about Arabs were also less inclusive toward an outgroup target. Different emotions were attributed to an Arab American group that excluded a target compared with an American group, evidencing more empathic attributions to participants' ingroup (American group). Findings from this study inform intergroup developmental research on the role of stereotypes, and the interplay of cognition and emotions in pre-adolescents' and adolescents' social decision-making in crosscultural interactions. Results of this study have implications for developing interventions that foster positive intergroup peer relationships.

The novel, it is said, represents a "precise analogue" of the imagined national community (Anderson). This national community is imagined as "inherently limited and sovereign." The Palestinian novel, however, tells the story of a national community that is neither limited nor sovereign. This study examines the literary mechanisms employed by Palestinian novelists to imagine a national community within and beyond the nation-state. It argues that the totality of a dispersed, discontiguous, and multi-sited Palestinian community with experiences that surpass dominant structures of history and geography is at the heart of the innovative impulse in the Palestinian novel. It focuses on nine novels by Ibrāhīm Naṣrallāh (b.1954, Wiḥdāt camp, Amman) from two series: al-Malhāt alfilasṭīnīyya (The Palestine Comedies), and the Shurafāt (Balconies). This body of work develops a model of Palestinian national belonging coined here as inter-textual. Drawn from Genette, Kristeva, Bloom, Barthes, and Bakhtin, the term describes the relationships between different Palestinian communities. The inter-textual nation, as an alternative paradigm of the national, creates an imaginary within which divergent narratives of Palestinian experience can be understood as a complex and networked whole. The intertextual nation creates imaginative links that break down not only the structures of thought which made thinking the nation-state possible, but further identifies, interrogates, and disrupts the structures of power that reinforced or existed alongside the nation state, including gender, family, and tradition. Subsumed within the story of an inter-textual Palestinian nation, these structures can no longer dictate or curtail what it means to be national. Imagined along the lines of Walter Benjamin's constellation of the idea, the intertextual nation becomes an open-ended and flexible construct that not only envisions a distinctive model for national belonging, but also prompts an alternative conceptual frame within which to read a new aesthetics of Arabic Literature more broadly.

Rating scales are popular for measuring attitudes, but response style, a source of measurement error associated with this type of question, can result in measurement bias in important attitudinal measures. Although numerous research efforts have been devoted to this topic, there are still some overlooked areas. This dissertation intends to fill three gaps in the literature on response style. Chapter 1 investigates the effects of face-to-face and Web survey on acquiescent response style (ARS) and extreme response style (ERS) using the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) data. Using the latent class analysis approach, I find that: 1) both ARS and ERS exist in both face-to-face and Web survey; 2) face-to-face respondents demonstrate more ARS and ERS than Web respondents; 3) the effect of mode on ERS is larger for black respondents than for white and Hispanic respondents. Chapter 2 compares ERS with respect to the format of response scale, specifically agree-disagree (A/D) an...

Jordanian father and an American (Irish-German) mother. When she was seven, her family moved to Jordan for two years, and she has lived between the U.S. and Jordan ever since. Abu-Jaber graduated with a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from SUNY Binghamton in 1986. Her first novel, Arabian Jazz, published by Harcourt Brace in 1993, won the Oregon Book Award, and was a finalist for the National PEN/ Hemingway award. The novel, set in upstate New York, where the author herself grew up, is a humorous look at a first generation Arab-American family migrating between their "Americanized" individual lives and the demands and expectations of the traditional extended family network. The characters lives and experiences demonstrate their displacement, spiritual homelessness, and the hardships of adjustment to a new society. After their mother Nora, who is a white American, dies during her first visit to Jordan, the rest of the Ramoud family is forced to navigate an unfamiliar culture without her. Abu-Jaber molds these themes together so skillfully that the book as a whole remains witty and entertaining. While the plot centers around the interactions of the Ramouds' extended family, it also looks at their community as a whole and how a small town in New York treats Arab-Americans. In Jean Grant's review of the novel in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, she notes that "Abu-Jaber's novel will probably do more to convince readers to abandon what media analyst Jack Shaheen calls America's 'abhorrence of the Arab' than any number of speeches or publicity gambits" (Sept. /Oct. 1993).

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the works of contemporary Arab British andArab American women novelists with a view toward delineating a poetics of themore nascent Arab British literature. I argue that there is a tendency among ArabBritish women novelists to foreground and advocate trans-cultural dialogue andcross-ethnic identification strategies in a more pronounced approach than their ArabAmerican counterparts who tend, in turn, to employ literary strategies to resiststereotypes and misconceptions about Arab communities in American popularculture. I argue that these differences result from two diverse racialized Arabimmigration and settlement patterns on both sides of the Atlantic. Chapter One looksat how Arab British novelist Fadia Faqir?s My Name is Salma and Arab Americannovelist Diana Abu-Jaber?s Arabian Jazz define Arabness differently in the light ofthe precarious position Arabs occupy in ethnic and racial discourses in Britain and inthe United States. Chapter Two e...

ii Acknowledgements iii CHAPTER ONE 1 Augmenting the Lens: Introducing an Interdisciplinary Theoretical Model 1 Summoning Synergy: Harnessing the Feelings that Guide Us Home 8 Theorizing the (Hybrid) Body: A Literature Review 11 Affective Attunement and Hybrid Performance 17 Revealing the Affective Link: Arab-American Affective Attunement 20 Significance of Study 23 Overview of the Dissertation 25 CHAPTER TWO 27 Contextualizing the Body Through Story: Embodied Narratives of Location (ENOL) ... 27 Following the Storyline Home: How Narrative Uncovers Experiences of Identity and Belonging 30 Elevating “Context:” Interpreting Performance & Liberating Identity 32 Turning to the Body: Embodied Narratives of Location 34 Embodying Experience: An Arab-American Study 37 Data Collection 39 Participants 39 Recruitment 40 Interviews 40 Poetic Transcription 46 Journals 48 Data Analysis & Researcher Reflexivity 49 Setting up the Study 53 CHAPTER THREE 55 Mariam: “At No Point Am I Both Simultaneous...

Detroit is home to one of the largest populations of Arab Americans outside of the Middle East, yet little is known about the cancer distribution in this ethnic group. The authors of this study created an Arab/Chaldean surname list and matched it with the Detroit SEER Registry to identify cancer cases of probable Arabic descent. We then determined proportional incidence ratios (PIR) for specific cancer sites among metropolitan Detroit Arab Americans as compared to non-Arab Whites, and contrasted the results with Middle Eastern data. Arab/Chaldean men had greater proportions of leukemia (29%), multiple myeloma (46%), liver (64%), kidney (33%), and urinary bladder (26%) cancers. Arab/Chaldean women had greater proportions of leukemia (23%), thyroid (57%), and brain (35%) cancers as compared with non-Arab White men and women. The cancers with significantly increased PIRs in the Detroit Arab/Chaldean population also are frequently diagnosed in Middle Eastern countries.

Jordanian father and an American (Irish-German) mother. When she was seven, her family moved to Jordan for two years, and she has lived between the U.S. and Jordan ever since. Abu-Jaber graduated with a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from SUNY Binghamton in 1986. Her first novel, Arabian Jazz, published by Harcourt Brace in 1993, won the Oregon Book Award, and was a finalist for the National PEN/ Hemingway award. The novel, set in upstate New York, where the author herself grew up, is a humorous look at a first generation Arab-American family migrating between their "Americanized" individual lives and the demands and expectations of the traditional extended family network. The characters lives and experiences demonstrate their displacement, spiritual homelessness, and the hardships of adjustment to a new society. After their mother Nora, who is a white American, dies during her first visit to Jordan, the rest of the Ramoud family is forced to navigate an unfamiliar culture without her. Abu-Jaber molds these themes together so skillfully that the book as a whole remains witty and entertaining. While the plot centers around the interactions of the Ramouds' extended family, it also looks at their community as a whole and how a small town in New York treats Arab-Americans. In Jean Grant's review of the novel in Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, she notes that "Abu-Jaber's novel will probably do more to convince readers to abandon what media analyst Jack Shaheen calls America's 'abhorrence of the Arab' than any number of speeches or publicity gambits" (Sept. /Oct. 1993).

This dissertation is dedicated to my beloved parents, my parents-in-law, my supportive husband, Dr. Nashwan Nashwan, and my sweet daughters Riyam, Liyan, and Rand. iii ACNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisor, Dr. Stan L. Bowie for his constant support. I am so grateful to him. I also thank my committee members, Dr. Bill Nugent, Dr.Rodney Ellis, and Dr. Asafa Jalata for their assistance, valuable comments and willingness to help. I was honored to have you in my dissertation committee. In addition, I would like to express my appreciation to the college of social work, the dean, the faculty and staff, my colleagues, and everyone who helped me during my journey of getting my PhD. I would like to acknowledge the Muslim community of Knoxville (MCK) for all of the support that I received from them, also the Arab families who encouraged their children to participate in this study. Finally I would like to thank my husband Dr. Nashwan Nashwan for all of his patience, hard work and encouragement to me during my study.