Imagining Arab Womanhood The Cultural Mythology Of Veils Harems And Belly Dancers In The Us Amira Jarmakani by Amira Jarmakani 9780230604728, 0230604722 instant download after payment.

Winner of the 2008 National Women's Studies Association Gloria Anzald?a prize!Imagining Arab Womanhood examines orientalist images of Arab womanhood in the United States since the turn of the twentieth century, exploring, in particular, representations of belly dancers, harem girls, and veiled women. Through semiotic analysis, Jarmakani demonstrates that these images have functioned as nostalgic placeholders for pressing, yet unarticulated concerns about shifting spatial and temporal realities within the contexts of expansionism/modernization and imperialism/late capitalism. Calling these representations cultural mythologies, Jarmakani maps them onto dominant American narratives of power and progress, insisting on an analysis that understands them to be artifacts shaped by the interests of the American contexts in which they circulate. Imagining Arab Womanhood is a vital addition to conversations about representation, race, and gender.