“Someone Will Come Along and Write the Next Chapter”; The Importance of Alixa Naff for Arab American Studies

Notes

1. From a telephone conversation with George Khouri at his residence on September 2, 2014.

2. Todd Fine, “Remembering Alixa Naff: ‘The Mother’ of Arab American Studies,” Arab American Institute website (June 6, 2013), http://www.aaiusa.org/blog/entry/remembering-alixa-naff-the-mother-of-arab-american-studies/.

3. Alixa Naff interview with Farhat Ziadeh on November 8, 1994, in Seattle, WA, subseries A5f, Naff Collection. In this interview, Ziadeh said that Rashid Khalidi's parents, Ismail Khalidy and Salwa Juha, met through their volunteer work for the Institute of Arab American Affairs in New York in 1945. I should note that upon consulting parts of Alixa's collections at the end of June 2013, just two days before Alixa's passing, I found the material incredibly dense with untapped manuscript. The series containing Katibah's papers alone deserves careful assessment beyond constraints of space here. Suffice it to say that the research value of the material is staggeringly high. Therefore, steps should be taken immediately to take better care of the material and to preserve the information by scanning the entire series.

4. Traces of this thinking are pervasive, for example: Michael W. Suleiman, “The Search for Identity,” in Eric J. Hooglund, ed., Crossing the Waters: Arabic-Speaking Immigrants in the United States before 1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987), 40, 41. Similar contentions concerning primary group affiliations can be found in Michael W. Suleiman, “A History of Arab American Political Participation,” in Philippa Strum, ed., American Arabs and Political Participation , conference proceedings (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, May 5, 2006), 3, 10.

5. From an address by Najib Diab, editor of Mirat Al-Gharb at the First Arab Conference in Paris, in 1913. See Muhib al-Din al-Khatib, Al-Mu'tamar al-'Arabi al-Awwal [e First Arab Conference] (Cairo: Higher Committee of the Ottoman Decentralization Party in Egypt, Bosphorus Press, 1913), 18.

6. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, “Maintaining the Faith of the Fathers: Dilemmas of Religious Identity in the Christian and Muslim Communities,” in Ernest McCarus, ed., The Development of Arab American Identity (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 61, also n29. Haddad's contention relies on the works of these pioneering scholars: Elaine C. Hagopian and Ann Paden, eds., The Arab-Americans: Studies in Assimilation (Wilmette, IL: Medina University Press International, 1969); Barbara C. Aswad, ed., Arabic Speaking Communities in American Cities (Staten Island, NY: Center for Migration Studies of New York, 1974); Philip M. Kayal and Joseph M. Kayal, The Syrian-Lebanese in America: A Study in Religion and Assimilation (Boston: Twayne, 1975); Sameer Abraham and Nabil Abraham, eds., Arabs in the New World; Studies on Arab American Communities (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1983); Eric J. Hooglund, Crossing the Waters; Arabic-Speaking Immigrants to the United States before 1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987); Gregory Orfalea, Before the Flames: A Quest for the History of Arab Americans (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988).

7. Hani J. Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans: From Syrian Nationalism to U.S. Citizenship (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2014), 71. Unfortunately, the name “Salloum,” i.e., Salloum Mokarzel replaced Katibah's name in the book due to a mistake in the proofreading process.

8. The label Lebanese, although integral to ascribed Syrian identity, became more salient following a complex set of circumstances discussed in chapter 5 of my book The Making of Arab Americans. For one thing, political work against British hegemony became costly for the immigrants as they felt the pressure of falling in line behind Americans allied against Nazism in the war. In addition, severe immigration restrictions from 1924 to 1965 took their toll as the cadre of activists was not replenished. This is why I believe that excavating the kind of new evidence Alixa secured is critical to connecting the dots for a contiguous Arab American narrative.

9. See Bawardi, The Making of Arab Americans , chapters 5 and 6. This complex discussion presents conscious ascription to “Arab American[ness]” just as the decision to disband the league was made for the reasons described in the text.