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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