The current conditions in the field of Arabic studies call into question how new working realities are transforming the nature of teaching and research about the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the rapidly growing resonance of antiracism and civil liberation movements inside and outside the United States and in various parts of the Global South, the ideological abode of 'white supremacy' continues to influence public and higher-education conditions, including the targeting of minority scholars, access to resources, travel to the MENA region, the scarcity of teaching positions as well as the growing decline of scholarly and professional growth.

This session aims to explore the underpinnings of these challenging conditions by examining how racism and white supremacy continue to impact the field of Arabic studies and the work of its present-day practitioners and constituents. Despite previous attempts, very little attention has been given to the specific institutional, quasi-cultural and professional realities and conditions that impact the production of research and scholarly work in the field of Arabic studies. The three panelists in this proposed session examine different working experiences that illustrate the transformative nature of Arabic studies in relation to the challenges of structural racism, white supremacy and the role of social media. While the session aims to unpack the limitations of present-day working conditions in the field of Arabic studies, it also highlights the importance of forging new networks of collaboration and solidarity that can support the trajectory of Arabic studies in the western academe.

In “Arabic Studied in the Context of White Supremacy: The Work of the Humanities in a ‘Death-World’” Samer Ali explores how the Arab/Muslim has been a productive race-effigy for discourse and praxis of white supremacy since the Early Modern Period. Ali argues that the most enduring biblical theory of white dominion, the “Sons of Noah,” subordinated Black Ham to Oriental Sem to white Japhet. He shows how an estimated 30% of enslaved Africans in the New World were Muslim; the first African revolt in the Americas had Wolof Muslim leadership, which prompted the 16^th-century Spanish Crown to prohibit importation of Wolof Muslims. Through a rich analysis of Arabic influences in western writing, Ali argues that twentieth-century higher education institutionalized the “the Oriental” in the service of colonialism, imperialism, and the national security state. In this paper, Ali asks, how can Arabic studies produce humanities knowledge in a white supremacist “death-world”?

Focusing on the challenges of teaching Arabic language and literature in a white-dominated classroom setting, Mona Kareem’s paper “Teaching While Arab: The Disembodiment of the Text and the Teacher” reflects on the fraught process of teaching Arabic literature in the American classroom as an Arab female writer. She creates a narrative that connects the disembodiment of the Arab teacher to that of the disembodiment of the Arabic text, when read in the colonial setting. Kareem engages with the existent literature on teaching Arabic literature in the American classroom to illustrate how the Arab teacher is often erased and policed, even in their own writings about the classroom. Her paper proposes that we instead utilize the question of the Arab teacher’s agency and personhood, and that we become intentional with our subjectivity and what is it that we seek from teaching our people’s literatures to the Americans. Kareem’s paper purports to share pedagogical approaches (non-linear, fragmentary, transnational) that embrace discomfort and resist complete answers or readings, as a mean of maneuvering and disabling the American student’s gaze.

Finally, in his paper titled “Recalibrating the Role of Social Media in Arabic Studies,” Ammar Naji investigates the importance of re-examining the understudied role of social media in the field of Arabic studies, and how this 'new working condition' presents new opportunities of collaboration and support for scholars and professionals in the field. Examining the shifting configurations of Yemeni-American online activism following the issuance of Donald Trump’s executive order and the Muslim Ban in 2017 and 2018, Naji discusses how young Arab immigrants are using social media as a borderless platform of resistance and grassroot mobilization against racist structures and discrimination in the United States. By exploring the borderless forms of Arab media activism, from the Bodega Strike Facebook page launched in response to Trump’s Muslim Ban to the development of new community-initiatives funded by Arab-American merchants and the appearance of Yemeni female activists, Naji’s work shows how the use of social media has created a ‘new working condition’ of solidarity that expands the conventional boundaries of Arabic studies and Arab engagement in the political and public sphere.