The Lighter Side of Evil: Arab American Artists in New York Open Access
Freij, Maysoun Y. (2008)
Abstract
Abstract The Lighter Side of Evil: Arab American Artists in New York By Maysoun Freij This dissertation is an ethnography of Arab American artists and arts organizers working in New York from 2003-2006. During this time period, a vibrant art scene emerged in New York aimed at increasing the exposure of Arab American artists to the general arts and entertainment industries of New York. This scene drew a wide array of Arab American filmmakers, comedians, actors, musicians, playwrights, poets, and visual artists into a network of producers and consumers of creative products aimed at their respective commercial markets, but infused with ethnically identifiable content. Though geographically dispersed throughout metropolitan New York, this community thrived off Internet list serves and events in venues throughout Manhattan. Fieldwork involved participation in the production of artistic events, analysis of performances and exhibits, and interviews with artists and arts organizers of Arab descent over a forty-two month period. It examined both the construction of an aesthetic economy based on the shared ethnic heritage of its producers and audiences as well as the participation of Arab American artists within the general aesthetic economy of New York City. Though the attacks on September 11, 2001 and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan may have helped generate public interest in Arab American artists, the most active members of the arts scene during the fieldwork period were second generation Arab Americans in their twenties and thirties who had been working at their careers in the arts for nearly ten years. They came of age with the expansion of the aesthetic economy during the reign of the United States as the hegemonic force within their ancestral homelands. This study reveals the ways that politics and ethnic identities feed the aesthetic production of this generation, and how worlds of aesthetic production become proxies for involvement in direct political activity. It also demonstrates the way that building a visible ethnic economy is central to the entrance of its participants in the mainstream economy, and how both are sustained by Orientalist fantasies and its most visible contemporary manifestation: the "war on terror."
Table of Contents
Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ..................................................................... 1 Chapter 2: Occupying Space in the Big Apple: Arab American Visibility and the Ever Present American Audience....... 58 Chapter 3: Battling Censorship (As Opposed to Zionism).............................. 115 Chapter 4: The Understudy: Art as a Proxy for Politics................................. 159 Chapter 5: The (female) Virgin (not)....................................................... 215 Chapter 6: The (male) Terrorist (not)....................................................... 260 Chapter 7: Conclusion........................................................................ 311 Bibliography.................................................................................... 329
About this Dissertation
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Primary PDF
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The Lighter Side of Evil: Arab American Artists in New York () | 2018-08-28 12:43:42 -0400 |
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Supplemental Files
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FreijFrontPages08.doc () | 2018-08-28 12:46:38 -0400 |
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