Arab American History Month is observed each April, officially recognized in 1996 by the Arab American National Museum and later designated by Congress in 2017. This month honors the rich history, culture, and contributions of Arab Americans to the United States. Initially established to raise awareness of the diverse Arab American community and its profound impact across fields such as the arts, politics, science, and social movements, Arab American History Month continues to foster appreciation and understanding.
As we bid farewell to the holy month of Ramadan and embrace the recent joy of Eid al-Fitr (Festival of Breaking the Fast, March 29-30), we also reflect on the vibrant history, values, and enduring contributions of Arab Americans. This is a time to recognize how the Arab American community has shaped the cultural, social, and historical fabric of our nation. From the world of arts and entertainment to the realms of science, education, and public service, Arab Americans have made an indelible mark, enriching the American experience in countless ways.
As we celebrate these significant moments, let us embrace the values of community, kindness, and understanding—values shared by both Eid al-Fitr and Arab American History Month. May this season bring peace, prosperity, and unity to all.
Eid Mubarak and Happy Arab American History Month!
If you are interested in learning more about the Arab American history, check out a book from the Robert W. Woodruff Library.
Americans of Arab heritage have made major contributions to U.S. society, and this is a timely and unique overview of their immigration patterns, settlement, adaptation, and assimilation for a general audience. The first wave of Arab immigrants, mostly Christian men from Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria, arrived in the United States between 1880 and 1925. This book discusses their history as it looks at the successive waves of immigrants, including the post-1965 immigrants, who have brought more diversity to the Arab American community. The latest immigrants have included more Muslims, many from Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan. The continuing interest in the Middle East, Islam, and the Muslim way of life make this a must-have source for those seeking to understand current events and our multicultural society.
“Daily Life of Arab Americans in the 21st Century”
The term “Arab American” is often used to describe a broad range of people who are ethnically diverse and come from many countries, including Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Kuwait. Some Arab Americans have been in the United States since the 1880s. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 highlighted the necessity for Americans to better understand the discrete nations and ethnicities of the Middle East.
This title documents the key aspects of contemporary Arab American life, including their many contributions to American society. It begins with an overview of the immigrant experience, but focuses primarily on the past decade, examining the political, family, religious, educational, professional, public, and artistic aspects of the Arab American experience. Readers will understand how this unique experience is impacted by political events both in the US and in the Arab world.
“History of Arab Americans: Exploring Diverse Roots”
This concise reference covers the diverse roots of Arabs in America, tracing the changing face of this community from the 19th century until today. From the restrictive immigration laws that the United States Congress passed against Arabs in the early 20th century to the backlash against this community following Sept. 11, Arab Americans have faced both successes and challenges in their quest to become part of American culture.
“Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal”
Arab American women have played an essential role in shaping their homes, their communities, and their country for centuries. Their contributions, often marginalized academically and culturally, are receiving long-overdue attention with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Arab American women’s studies. The collected essays in this volume capture the history and significance of Arab American women, addressing issues of migration, transformation, and reformation as these women invented occupations, politics, philosophies, scholarship, literature, arts, and, ultimately, themselves. Arab American women brought culture and absorbed culture; they brought relationships and created relationships; they brought skills and talents and developed skills and talents. They resisted inequities, refused compliance, and challenged representation. They engaged in politics, civil society, the arts, education, the market, and business. And they told their own stories. These histories, these genealogies, these narrations that are so much a part of the American experiment are chronicled in this volume, providing an indispensable resource for scholars and activists.
“Arab-American Faces and Voices: The Origins of an Immigrant Community”
As Arab Americans seek to claim their communal identity and rightful place in American society at a time of heightened tension between the United States and the Middle East, an understanding look back at more than 100 years of the Arab American community is especially timely. In this book, Elizabeth Boosahda, a third-generation Arab American, draws on over two hundred personal interviews, as well as photographs and historical documents that are contemporaneous with the first generation of Arab Americans (Syrians, Lebanese, Palestinians), both Christians and Muslims, who immigrated to the Americas between 1880 and 1915, and their descendants.
“Arab American Aesthetics: Literature, Material Culture, Film, and Theatre”
This book seeks to unsettle current conversations within Arab American studies that neglect aesthetics as a set of choices and constraints. Rather than divorce aesthetics from politics, the book sutures the two more closely together by challenging the causal relationship so often attributed to them. The conversations include formal choices but also extend to the broad idea of what makes a work distinctly Arab American. That is, what about its beauty, ugliness, sublimity, or humor is explicitly tied to it as part of a tradition of Arab American arts? The book opens the ways that we discuss Arab American literary and fine arts, so that we understand how Arab American identity and experience begets Arab American artistic enterprise. Split into three sections, the first offers a set of theoretical propositions for understanding aesthetics that traverse Arab American cultural production. The second section focuses on material culture to think through the creation of objects as an aesthetic enterprise. The final section looks at narratives in theater and how the impact of such a medium has the potential to recreate in both senses of the word: play and invention. By shifting the conversation from identity politics to the relationship between politics and aesthetics, this book provides an important contribution to Arab American studies. It will also appeal to students and scholars of ethnic studies, museum studies, and cultural studies.
—by Neda Zeraatkar. Middle East and Islamic Studies librarian