Synopses & Reviews
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 Americas 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.
Review
“American Arabesque is daringly ambitious. As a work of scholarship, it ventures an extraordinary range of reference, involving old and new works in English and Arabic. As a challenge to think differently about the United States in a larger world, it ventures to name its perspective ‘dirty cosmopolitanism. It makes good on both these risks." -Jonathan Arac,author of Impure Worlds
Review
"...this book will prove useful to both historians and literary scholars....always stimulating and rewarding...it should inspire many new avenues of research."-Anna Suranyi,New England Quarterly
Synopsis
Since 1964, the annual Socialist Register has brought together leading writers on the left to investigate aspects of a common theme. The theme of this issue is the new U.S.-led imperialist project which is currently transforming relations of global power. Contributors to this volume include:
Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, "The new imperialism: relations between the states of the USA and the advanced capitalist countries."
Colin Leys and John S. Saul, "Development under the new imperialism."
Greg Albo, "The economics of the new imperialism"
David Harvey, "The geography of the new imperialism"
Aijaz Ahmad, "Culture and the new imperialism."
Saskia Sassen, "The imperial city, north and south."
John Bellamy Foster, "Imperialism and the Ecosphere."
About the Author
Jacob Rama Berman is Assistant Professor of English Literature and Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University.
Table of Contents
Preface: Roadside Attraction Acknowledgments
Introduction: Guest Figures
1 The Barbarous Voice of Democracy
2 Pentimento Geographies
3 Poes Taste for the Arabesque
4 American Moors and the Barbaresque
5 Arab Masquerade: Mahjar Identity Politics and Transnationalism
Afterword: Haunted Houses
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the Author