Belly dancing: Arab-face, Orientalist feminism, and U.S. Empire

American Quarterly

Volumn 60, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 317-345

  Maira, Sunaina ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949881406     PISSN: 00030678     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/aq.0.0019     Document Type: Review

References (84)

1. Stavros Stavrou Karayanni, Dancing Fear and Desire: Race, Sexuality, and Imperial Politics in Middle Eastern Dance (Waterloo, Canada: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2004)
2. Priya Srinivasan, "Dancing Modern/Dancing Indian/ Dancing...In America," Ballet-Dance Magazine (April 2004), http://www. ballet-dance.com/200404/articles/asiandance.html (accessed September 24, 2007)
3. Priya Srinivasan, "The Bodies beneath the Smoke, or, What's behind the Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Dance History," Discourses in Dance 4.1 (November 2007): 31
4. Jane Desmond, introduction to Meaningin Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 2
5. Randy Martin, Critical Moves: Dance Studies in Theory and Politics (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998), 107
6. William A. Williams, Empire as a Way of Life: An Essay on the Causes and Character of America's Present Predicament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)
7. Ann L. Stoler, "Intimidations of Empire: Predicaments of the Tactile and Unseen," in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann L. Stoler (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 2
8. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Random House, 1993), 52. Said developed the idea of cultural attitudes and references inherent to metropolitan cultural identities in the contexts of British, French, and American literature that implicitly upheld a certain understanding and imagining of imperial identity
9. Paul Gilroy, Postcolonial Melancholia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 101, 118
10. and Michael Rogin, "'Make My Day!' Spectacle as Amnesia in Imperial Politics [and the Sequel]," in Cultures of United States Imperialism, ed. Kaplan and Pease, 499-534
11. Susan Akram, "Orientalism Revisited in Asylum and Refugee Claims," in Moral Imperialism: A Critical Anthology, ed. Berta Esperanza and Hernandez-Truyol, 61-77 (New York: New York University Press, 2002), 62
12. Edward Said, Orientalism, 3, 5
13. Anouar Abdel-Malek, "Orientalism in Crisis," in Orientalism: A Reader, ed. Alexander L. Macfie, 47-56 (New York: New York University Press, 2000)
14. Holly Edwards, "Curator's Preface," and "A Million and One Nights: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930," in Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930, ed. Holly Edwards (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), ix, 16
15. Timothy Mitchell, "McJihad: Islam in the U.S. Global Order," Social Text 73/20.4 (2002): 1-18
16. Amy Kaplan, "Where Is Guantánamo?" in Legal Borderlands: Law and the Construction of American Borders, edited by Mary Dudziakand Leti Volpp, special issue of American Quarterly 57.5 (Fall 2005): 831-58
17. Harry Magdoff, Imperialism Without Colonies (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2003)
18. Kaplan, "Where Is Guantánamo?" 837
19. Neil Smith, The Endgame of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2005), 49
20. Neil Smith, The Endgame of Globalization, 47
21. Edwards, "A Million and One Nights," 28
22. Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 231
23. Steven Salaita, The Holy Land in Transit: Colonialism and the Quest for Canaan (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2006)
24. Little, American Orientalism, 14
25. Amy Koritz, "Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allan's The Vision of Salome," in Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. Jane Desmond (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1997), 134
26. Mahmood Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (New York: Pantheon, 2004)
27. Marta Savigliano, Tango and the Political Economy of Passion (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995)
28. Uday S. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999)
29. Wendy Buonaventura, Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (London: Saqi, 1989)
30. Tina Hobin, Belly Dance: The Dance of Mother Earth (London: Marion Boyars, 2003)
31. Daniela Gioseffi, Earth Dancing: Mother Nature's Oldest Rite (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1980), 50
32. Rosina Fawzia Al-Rawi, Grandmother's Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing (New York: Interlink, 1999), 50
33. on modern dance, see Srinavasan, "Dancing Modern" and "The Bodies beneath the Smoke."
34. Hobin, Bell Dance, 150
35. Najwa Adra, "Belly Dance: An Urban Folk Genre," in Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism, and Harem Fantasy, ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young, 28-50 (Costa Mesa, Calif.: Mazda Publishers, 2005)
36. Hobin, Belly Dance, 151
37. Sellers-Young, "Body, Image, Identity."
38. Gioseffi, Earth Dancing, 47, 52
39. Sellers-Young, "Body, Image, Identity," 278
40. Gioseffi, Earth Dancing, 9
41. Sellers-Young, "Body, Image, Identity," 288
42. Karayanni, Dancing Fear and Desire, 25
43. Anne Rasmussen, "An Evening in the Orient": The Middle Eastern Nightclub in America," in Belly Dance, ed. Shay and Sellers-Young, 177, 187
44. Rasmussen, "An Evening in the Orient," 190
45. and Michael W. Suleiman, "The Arab Immigrant Experience," in Arabs in America: Building a New Future, ed. Michael W. Suleiman, 1-21 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999)
46. Rasmussen, "An Evening in the Orient," 172
47. See Priya Srinivasan's analysis of the underexplored role of Indian immigrant women who performed as nautch dancers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fairs in the United States and inspired American dancers; Srinivasan, "The Body beneath the Smoke."
48. See Sunaina Maira, "Henna and Hip-Hop: The Politics of Cultural Production and the Work of Cultural Studies," Journal of Asian American Studies 3.3 (October 2000): 329-69
49. and "Temporary Tattoos: Indo-Chic Fantasies and Late Capitalist Orientalism," Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 3.1 (2002): 134-60
50. Said, Orientalism
51. Salaita, The Holy Land
52. Nabeel Abraham, "Anti-Arab Racism and Violence in the United States," in The Development of Arab-American Identity, ed. Ernest McCarus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994)
53. Steven Salaita, Anti-Arab Racism in the USA: Where It Comes From and What It Means for Politics Today (London: Pluto Press, 2006)
54. Therese Saliba, "Military Presences and Absences," in Food for our Grandmothers: Writings by Arab-American and Arab-Canadian Feminists, ed. Joanna Kadi, 125-32 (Boston: South End Press, 1994)
55. For example, see Therese Saliba, "Resisting Invisibility: Arab Americans in Academia and Activism," in Arabs in America, ed. Suleiman, 304-19
56. Helen Samhan, "Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab-American Experience," in Arabs in America, ed. Suleiman, 209-26
57. For example, the case of the "L.A. Eight" in 1986; see David Cole and James Dempsey, Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties in the Name of National Security (New York: New Press, 2002)
58. Less well known is the 1968 case of three Yemenis falsely accused of plotting to assassinate President Nixon and the FBI's targeted surveillance of Arab Americans in Operation Boulder beginning in 1972. See Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (Northampton, Mass.: Olive Branch, 2006), 216
59. The 1967 Arab-Israeli war and the anti-Arab representations in the media at the time galvanized a younger generation of Arab Americans who staged mass demonstrations and formed pan-Arab American political organizations, such as the Arab American University Graduates and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. See Sameer Abraham, "Detroit's Arab-American Community," in Arabs in the New World, ed. Abraham and Abraham, 85-108
60. Other scholars have documented earlier moments when Arab nationalists in the United States tried to mobilize around the Palestine question in 1917-1932. See Lawrence Davidson, "Debating Palestine: Arab-American Challenges to Zionism, 1917-1932," in Arabs in America, ed. Suleiman, 227-40
61. Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking ofWorld Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996)
62. Mamdani, Good Muslim, Bad Muslim
63. Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press 2006), 6, 8
64. Sadik J. Al-'Azm, "Orientalism and Orientalism in Reverse," in Orientalism: A Reader, ed. Alexander Macfie, 217-38 (New York: New York University Press, 2000)
65. Ella Shohat, "Gender and Culture of Empire: Toward a Feminist Ethnography of the Cinema," in Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film, ed. Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 47
66. Ernest J. Wilson III, "Orientalism: A Black Perspective," in Orientalism: A Reader, ed. Macfie, 239-48
67. Sellers-Young, "Body, Image, Identity," 287
68. Available electronically and in paperback at http://booklocker.com/books/ 2732.html
69. Coluccia Pina, Anette Paffrath, and Jean Putz, Belly Dancing: The Sensual Art of Energy and Spirit (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2003), 39
70. Gioseffi, Earth Dancing, 9, 72
71. Coluccia, Paffrath, and Putz, Belly Dancing, 4
72. See http://www.heavyhips.net/palika.htm (accessed April 29, 2005)
73. Dallal's DVD on belly dancing can be found at www.amazon.com
74. Rachel Rubin and Jeffrey Melnick, Immigration and American Popular Culture: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2007), 137-38
75. Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005)
76. Fatema Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West: Different Cultures, Different Harems (New York: Washington Square Press, 2001)
77. and Katha Pollitt, "2, 4, 6, 8! This Beheading Is Really Great!" The Nation, July 13, 2007, http://www.thenation.com/blogs/ anotherthing?bid=25 &pid=213916 (accessed January 21, 2008)
78. Buonaventura, Serpent of the Nile, 275
79. Marsha Hamilton, "The Arab Woman in U.S. Popular Culture: Sex and Stereotype," in Food for our Grandmothers, ed. Kadi, 173-80
80. Adra, "Belly Dance," 46
81. Lila Abu-Lughad, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002): 783-90
82. Amira Jarmakani, "To Be Free: The Spectacle of Belly Dancing in Contemporary U.S. Culture" (presented at Mapping Arab Diasporas conference, University of Dearborn, Michigan, April 2006)
83. Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West
84. Michael Rogin, "Make My Day!"