Past Event

Becoming Arab Argentine: The Negotiation of Immigrant Identities amid Orientalism and Nationalism

Christina Civantos is Associate Professor of Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami and the author The Afterlife of Al-Andalus: Muslim Iberia in Contemporary Arab and Hispanic Narratives and Between Argentines and Arabs: Argentine Orientalism, Arab Immigrants, and the Writing of Identity. To see the poster for this event, please see here. 

From the early 20th-century to the early 21st-century, Arabic-speaking immigrants to Argentina and their descendants have faced the task of defining their identities amid fixed ideas about Arabs that Argentinians had inherited from Europe and to which they had added. The collection of fixed ideas about the region, known as Orientalism, and the trajectory of Argentine nationalism led writers and politicians of Arab descent to use divergent strategies for self-definition. Dr. Civantos will discuss literary and historical works as well as the career of former Argentine president Carlos Menem to demonstrate what is at stake, what is lost, and what is gained in this negotiation of identity and that of Middle Eastern diasporas throughout Latin America.

This is an ICSLAC sponsored event.