Ajnabieh - The Foreigner

Like most people, I was annoyed about Google Reader going away, since it's the way I read blogs these days that aren't on Dreamwidth. (Though, since I usually read it on my phone, it means I don't comment much--sorry, Dr. Koshary et al.) However, I am feeling particularly smart right now, because I solved my problem: Dreamwidth feeds.

Duh, I know, right?

Anyway, this means I just imported all of my blogs from Reader onto here, and I am very pleased. I also just created a bunch of new feeds, which some of you might be interested in, like...

connectedincairo_feed - Connected in Cairo, the blog of Mark Allen Peterson, an ethnographer of transnationalism in Egypt and one of my favorite academic bloggers.
feministphilosophers_feed - Feminist Philosophers, an excellent source for info both about feminist philosophy, feminist criticism of the field of philosophy, and feminist analysis of the contemporary world.
gfshoestring_feed - Gluten-Free on a Shoestring, One of my favorite gluten-free baking & cooking blogs. I have one of her cookbooks, and have made a bunch of her online recipes--if you're a GF person, she's totally worth following.
mmw_feed - Muslimah Media Watch, which has a great variety of articles on issues that effect Muslim women worldwide.
mideastchannel_feed - The Middle East Channel, great analysis by academics and think-tank types on contemporary Middle Eastern politics.
tinycatpants_feed - Tiny Cat Pants, a fabulous blogger who writes about Tennessee politics, crochet, her dramatic family issues, and witchcraft.
wrongingrights_feed - Wronging Rights, a group blog on human rights law with a heavy dose of snark
rebelecon_feed - Rebel Economy, a great blog on the Egyptian economy post-revolution
koonj_feed - Koonj, the blog of my dear friend Shabana Mir, which has some great posts right now on her recent experience teaching research methods in her native Pakistan

Anyone else have recs for feeds I should follow? I was glad to see that alreadypretty_feed and racialicious_feed were already created...

Quick hits from my reading list:

Egypt, the IMF, and Europe. A policy paper by Farah Halime, whose blog is a great resource on Middle Eastern economics for folks (like me) who want to incorporate thinking on economic issues into our work without being, ourselves, experts in economics. (I am still confused how I fell into doing political economy work at this particular moment in time.) The ongoing disaster that is Egypt's economy, and how it relates to the world economic system, isn't nearing a resolution, but this paper neatly lays out what's going on in Egyptian politics and economics that's making negotiating with the IMF so difficult, and what the policy problems with loans are going to be. (It's not anti-loan or anti-IMF, but it does acknowledge the multiple issues with loans and their consequences--more reformist than radical.)

The Anatomy of Protest in Egypt and Tunisia. The Arab Barometer project is the best collection of cross-national quantitative data on public opinion in the Arab world; as a qualitative researcher, I'm always glad when someone else has collected high-quality quant data that I can use in a glancing manner when I need some of it, so I don't have to. Here, three of the researchers associated with the project lay out some conclusions about protesters in Egypt and Tunisia during the revolutions. The centrality of economic and anti-corruption concerns for protesters stands out, as does the relative lack of interest in Islamist transformation, and the lower interest in civil and political rights.

Engaging the Haitian Diaspora. The Caribbean countries are some of the most important and most-studied cases of diaspora political involvement, and the details of the Haitian diaspora's demographics recounted in this article are fascinating, and demonstrate why diaspora political and economic engagement is so important in this case. I'm also glad to see more stuff not about the Middle East coming from the Cairo Review, which is a brilliant new(-ish) journal from AUC.

What is Tuz? Storytelling from the Queer Arab Diaspora. I haven't listened to this yet--in fact, I rarely listen to podcasts and radio shows, because I am weird and prefer to assimilate new information by reading, rather than listening--but it seems really awesome. And makes me miss NYC.

Explanation is Not the Point: Domestic Work, Islamic Dawa and Becoming Muslim in Kuwait (PDF) This brilliant article by Attiya Ahmad on migrant domestic workers' conversions to Islam in Kuwait is fascinating as a piece of ethnography, and insightful as an exploration of what 'conversion' means in different cultural contexts. I'm particularly interested in it because I'm returning to an old project on the construction of an idea of preference for Muslim domestic workers in Gulf countries, and this comments interestingly on the subject in one of the footnotes. (Also, because of my obsession with everything related to Kuwait ever. KUWAIT.)

Two of these are not like the other:

1) El Koshary (Egypt's answer to The Onion), SCAF declares itself "creator and maintainer of the universe,". LOLz. Thanks to loveanddistain for passing it on.

2) Oh also? The Kuwaiti National Assembly's been dissolved. HA HA HA *WEEP* This is different than previous dissolutions in structure, in that there won't be new elections, but it points to the extent to which the amir's power feels threatened by the current opposition-led parliament: he's basically ordered a legal trial separation while everyone pursues couples' therapy. Anyway, here's Kuwait Times on the subject.

3) And everything else I'm reading about Egypt:

If you just want a good summary: this one explains what's up and why it all sucks.

The English text of the amendments
Basic article about the MB protests, which are both for Morsi and against the SCAF constitutional amendments
This also talks about protests, but it doesn't just call them MB (which is correct)
The Constituent Assembly, despite the parliment that elected it having been dissolved, has elected a chair; let's see if we get any constitution out of it.
Hey Ikhwan? Know how you won the parliamentary elections, and may have won the presidency? Now is a good time for us to decide if you're illegal.
Here are some funny ways people invalidated their ballots. VOTE BATMAN.

A. I know a lot of you are also fans/fannish, and so I'm putting this first: The Journal of Transformative Works and Cultures, the fandom-studies journal put out by the OTW, has a new edition out on fandom and activism, which looks really exciting. I had the chance to read two articles before publication, one as a peer reviewer and one as a friend-of-the-author, and I really recommend both of them: The German federal election of 2009: The challenge of participatory cultures in political campaigns and Being of Service: X-Files fans and social engagement. Both are fascinating, and provide interesting ways of thinking about fandom and activism. I'm sure the rest of the issue is as awesome. Check it out, if this stuff interests you.


B. And the news story of the moment is the...I'm looking for a polite synonym for 'clusterf***' here...that is the state of electoral and military politics in Egypt. To be brief about it, the first round of elections put forth two candidates who were unpalatable to the majority of the population (Ahmed Shafiq, who is military in background and had been a part of the Mubarak regime, and Muhammad Morsi, who represents the Muslim Brotherhood, the more centrist of the Islamist politica movements); then, in the past week, SCAF (the military collective ruling at the moment) seized a bunch of rights that had been delegated to the parliament and civilian forces, while the Constitutional Court dismissed the entire democratically elected parliament because of 'irregularities' (sorry for the italics, I just feel ~~ways~~ about this); and Saturday and Sunday (i.e., today and tomorrow), the second round of the elections are being held, amid calls to boycott or invalidate ballots, a bunch of people holding their noses and voting for Shafiq or Morsi, and grumblings about whether the election will be fair at all. I'm sitting here eating a lot of popcorn and trying not to get too anxious, and reading the news. Some articles: Mohammad El Dahshan lays out precisely how bad it is in clear terms, Juan Cole points to the nested nature of the various problems here, and Lauren Bohn describes the level of fracture going on at the ground level. If you want to see what's going on during today and tomorrow's elections, here's the Ahram live blog, and here's Egypt Independent's.

C. Oh, also, in "hey there, war crimes are kinda an issue, you know?" news, the UN is leaving Syria. This...is not good. At all. I have no further commentary, apart from numb horror.

D. And some analysis:

I've been watching politically aware, pro-democracy, pro-revolution Egyptians angst over the outcomes of the first round of presidental elections since they happened, and I've been mulling. I don't disagree with their assessment of the lousiness of the two candidates; if I were an Egyptian citizen, I wouldn't know who to vote for either. (And I sure as hell wouldn't ask Thomas Friedman, but that's another issue.) But here's the thing: this sucks the way functioning democracy sucks. People had widely disbursed political interests; they voted for them. They got a choice between two candidates who both suck, but who represent commonly held positions. You know who can sympathize with this position? French voters in 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen, the racist candidate, came in second to the center-right candidate, horrifying everybody from center-left on over (and a lot of other people, too). You know who else can? American voters, who always seem to get stuck voting for people we barely like, but who are less awful than the other guy. (I'm going to be holding my nose *so hard* in November in that voting booth. Buy me a drink and ask me about drone strikes some time.) I'm really sorry, ya al-misriyeen, but this is what democracy is like: it freakin' blows. Amid all the ways in which SCAF is trying to yank power back from the people of Egypt and civiliam power, this presidential election is a sad little reminder that democracy doesn't make everything better--it just makes the process by which we fight things that suck a little cleaner and easier.

So, the government of Tunisia collapsed today. As of right now, the former president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, is in an airplane en route to Malta Paris (I'm glad I checked before I hit post), and the Prime Minister, Mohamed Ghannouchi, is assuming the presidency. Riots and demonstrations are ongoing, and it's not precisely clear whether Ben Ali's departure will be enough to calm the situation sufficiently. In any case, it's an exciting, scary, and fascinating moment for Arab politics. I collected some interesting links, ranging from good news sources to excellent editorials to a nod to Arabic linguistics, because I'm like that. Let me know if you see anything else good in your internetting today!

Sources To Follow About What's Up

Live: Tunisia Turmoil (BBC)

This is what I'm following for the play-by-play of what's going on. It's an auto-updating page, so I'm keeping it open and flipping back and forth as I get things done on the computer. There's something very powerful about watching a regime fall in real time. I may, possibly, have gotten something in my eye.

Spotlight on Tunisia (Al Jazeera English)

Al Jazeera's coverage is pretty in-depth; they also have cool things like an interactive map of protests over time.

Mr. Oui Oui Takes Charge (Blake Hounshell @ The Middle East Channel)

A basic update on the situation as of right now--with some details on Ghannouchi.

Global Voices - Tunisia page

Global Voices is a blog aggregator/translation project, that pulls blog posts from countries all over the world, translates them into other languages, and groups them together by theme. This will get you all of the Tunisia posts currently on the site, most of which are about the ongoing unrest. If you don't speak Arabic but want to know what's being said, this is a good source for that.

Good Editorials/Essays

Where are the democracy promoters on Tunisia? (Marc Lynch @ Foreign Policy)

Lynch has been on fire with the Tunisia posts this week. I picked this one because it points out a major problem in American foreign policy: that it's remarkably inconsistent, paying more attention to "famous cases" than to others that are structurally identical, but lack the name recognition.

The Limits of Silencing Tunisia (Bassam Bounenni @ the Middle East Channel)

Addresses the freedoms of speech and press issues with the Ben Ali regime, by a Tunisian journalist.

Activist Crackdown: Tunisia vs. Iran (Jillian C. York @ Al Jazeera English)

So, why did a "twitter revolution" in Iran end up the biggest piece of political news for a month, but the same actions in Tunisia get little to no coverage? Inquiring minds want to know.

Reporting With Background Info

Behind Tunisia Unrest, Rage Over Wealth of Ruling Family (New York Times)
An article on the rioting at Hammamet, a beach resort town; gives some insight into the class dynamics of the conflict.

Rumbles on the Arab Street (Middle East Channel)

Cool slideshow of images from the protests, with commentary.

Unrest in Tunisia, Fuel by Facebook (NY Times Video)

A quick video report; no transcript available that I saw. At 1:30, there are a group of students going in a circle around a bunch arranged in a pattern. The ones in the center are spelling out حرية, hurriyeh, freedom.

And For Awesomeness's Sake

Ben Ali speaks in Tunisian "for the first time" (Language Log)

Addressing the linguistic issues at play in Ben Ali's most recent speeches. Arabic diglossia is one of my favorite things about it, but also one of the biggest pains for a non-native speaker learning the language; all my education has been in fusha, which means I'm highly unequipped to handle most daily exchanges.

Proof I've been a terrible blogger this summer: I had links from July stored in a "to be blogged" file on my browser. D'oh. Anyway, I culled them, and these two were still worth posting:

( Cute children bloggers and depressing Palestinian politics )

And now, on to some actually contemporary links! Le sigh.

( Social media, post-conflict women's philanthropy, political pop music, and women and Park51 )

And, since watching the Shatha Hassoun video sent me down a rabbit hole of Arabic pop on YouTube, let me just close by linking to Ah W Nuss (Yes and a Half) and Ya Salam (...Oh peace, literally? but it's just an interjection? Translating song titles is hard) by Nancy Ajram, with English subtitles.

I am just finishing up my grading for the semester, which means I'm rather on the edge about everything--it's a period of high burnout and frustration. (Though, thank you, student who titled your response paper "My Final Response Paper: What I’ve learned of Resistance and an Opportunity to Call Out People Who Believe in Radical Semiotics," for making me feel better for quite a while.) So, here are some linky links. How lazy am I going to be? I'm not even going to bother to code them. DW will make them clickable via magic, right? Awesome.

OFF TOPIC:
FEMINIST HULK
http://twitter.com/feministhulk

This has nothing to do with Arab-Americans, but it is made of awesome.


( Assorted: includes stuff on media studies, Arabic literature, queer stuff, health stuff, Israeli/Palestinian conflict stuff )


( Special section on Rima Fakih, because the party don't stop )

As a teacher, I'm always struggling to figure out good assignments that will cause my students to think, engage with the material, explore their own interests, and, hopefully, present me with papers that won't bore me out of my goddamned skull while I'm reading them. (In case you didn't know, most professors consider grading the single most awful thing we do for our paychecks. I don't know, I think scanning articles for uploading is worse; occasionally papers are interesting.)

This semester, I gave my students an annotated bibliography assignment. Twice during the semester, they have to find 10 sources having to do with Middle Eastern diasporic communities, write a properly-formatted bibliographic entry for them, and then a short paragraph about how the material relates to class. A source could be anything--an event, a blog post, a YouTube video, a book.

I got a huge number of interesting sources from the students in their first round of assignments. From my perspective, this assignment worked--the students learned (mostly) how to use Chicago style to cite sources (a big problem in my previous classes), they read and watched other interesting things about Middle Eastern diasporas, and now I have a bunch of cool recommendations to read for later. I'll have to ask the students if they liked it, but this one might be a keeper for future classes.

(Incidentally, my attempt to do response papers was a total failure, as most of the class simply hasn't turned them in. Folks who are/were in American universities and colleges as undergrads: are several short response papers (2-3 pages) a part of your experience of humanities and social science classes? What types? I'm mystified by the fact that my students don't seem to understand that they have to do them.)

Here are some of the highlights from the assignment. From my students' computers to yours!

( graphic novels, interviews, and YouTube videos )

This links post could substantially be called "Links that keep me on the bare edge of psychotic rage." Seriously, it's a full-palm-button-smash of everything I hate in Arab-American/Muslim-American discursive relations. I need a big tray of kanafeh and two hours with a Nancy Ajram album to fix this, people. (Note: don't read the YouTube comments on that video, or you'll undo all the good you'll have just done by watching it.)

( click here for terrorist flash cards, mosques of doom, the horrors of hijab, right-wing muckraking, and one very nice story about white girls who don't suck )

The Latino Crescent: Latinos make a place for themselves in Muslim America

A really lovely article. Among the high points: introducing a hip-hop group called "Mujahideen Team," and then explaining that "mujahideen" means "one who struggles in the way of God," without even mentioning that other meaning it has; the framing, by interviewees, of the Moorish period in Spain as a way to connect Latina/o identity with Islam; referring to young men who have informally changed their names from Spanish to Arabic names only by their Arabic names, and mentioning their Spanish names only in passing; not being terribly othering about hijab; the insistance by one of the women interviewed in maintaining her Puerto Rican identity alongside her Muslim identity. It's really a good article, though it makes me a little bitter that we so rarely see articles this good about Arab or South Asian Muslims.

The Little Princess - Jezebel

Ideas move with objects. See the Disney Princess bag in the corner of the frame? Transnational circulation of gender ideology, right there.

Day 18: MAS Youth Center

I asked, and, magically, the guys at 30 Mosques - 30 Days delivered! A trip to the Muslim American Society Youth Center, which they locate as being in Bay Ridge, but I consider in Bensonhurst. Interesting thoughts on how communities are constructed therein.

Americans turn from hatred to education 8 years since 9/11

"The Obama speech [on healthcare] was historic in many ways. It was only the 15th time since 1952 that an American president has brought together both the House and the Senate in one room to address a major problem, usually addressing wartime concerns. But it was the first time that the two speakers at a joint session had Arab names: Boustany and Hussein."

Briefly, during the presidential campaign, my (Mexican) best friend changed his middle name on Facebook from Armando to Hussein. I still find this amusing. But seriously, I wonder about the identity politics going on here. Yes, both Hussein and Boustany are Arab names. But associations between Obama and Islam/Arabs have been widely seen as hurting him in public opinion (see my previous post on just one bit of polling data on this). Boustany is the grandson of first-wave Syrians--the largely Christian wave of migration from what was then Greater Syria, but was concentrated in what is now Lebanon. Although there was tremendous tension over the whiteness of these early immigrants (see Sara Gualtieri's work on this, for example, or Alixa Naff's, or Helen Samhan's piece, among others, in Mike Suleiman's 1999 Arabs in America), their descendants have been able to pass, unremarkedly, into the American white mainstream, and are no longer seen as foreign or other in many cases. More recent immigrants, particularly Muslims, have more difficulty assimilating. I don't want to argue with Roy's general point, which is that things may have changed for the better for Arab-Americans since the very dark days of September and October 2001. I just want to put a note of caution alongside it: maybe not all symbolic victories are equally victorious.

The Fight of the Century: Chesler vs Wolf

I keep wanting to come up with something to say about the current round of the debates about what perspective feminists should have about the diverse and contested practices of veiling throughout Arab and Muslim communities. And yet, I am intensely tired of this discussion, and I'm not even a woman who covers. I'll just let Fatemeh's post do the talking for me. (Oh, and her colleague Princesse de Clèves did a nice, substantial follow-up piece. Yeah, what she said.)