Next month, the American Political Science Association will convene a national conference on Arab American women at Kansas State. A diverse group of more than 30 academics and authors will present talks on immigration, history, settlement, organizations, professions, gender issues, marriage and family, health, religion, involvement in society and politics, status within the Arab-American community and the larger American society, successes and failures, and general accomplishments. Presenters will also discuss Arab-American literature, music and the arts.

The Conference on Arab American Women is organized by Michael W. Suleiman, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Kansas State University, and takes place at KSU in Manhattan, Kansas, March 12-15, 2009. Among the presenters are authors Mohja Kahf, Shamira Chothia Ahmed, Sunaina Maira, Lisa Suhair Majaj, Gregory Orfalea, Nuha Abudabbeh, Salma Abugideiri, Kristine J. Ajrouch, Nahla al-Huraibii, Ben Beitlin, Mohamed Benitto, Jess Bier, Bridget Blomfield, Louise Cainkar, Florence Dallo, Carol N. Fadda-Conrey, Sarah Gualtieri, Carol Haddad, Erik Love, Brahim Labari, Yasmin Kronfli , Maysa Abou-Youssef Hayward, Amira Jarmakani, Suad Joseph, Nicole Khoury, Amy E. Rowe, Anne K. Rasmussen, Jen’nan Ghazal Read, Theresa Saliba, Helen Hatab Samhan, Loukia K. Sarroub, Garbi Schmidt and Michael W. Suleiman. For more information, including detailed descriptions of topics and papers, click here.

“As this is the first such conference,” comments Michael W. Suleiman, “I sought to have presentations covering a wide variety of issues pertinent to Arab-American women's lives, including history, society, politics, gender, health, religion, etc. I am confident that the papers and discussions will provide a rich array of original studies and generate much intellectual debate. It is my hope that the conference will inspire others to convene similar conferences on this important topic, which will enhance our understanding of the Arab-American community generally and Arab-American women specifically.”

Among Suleiman’s publications are The Arab-American Experience in the United States and Arabs in America: Building a New Future. He is editor and co-author of Arab Americans: Continuity and Change and The Arabs in the Mind of America.

Among the presenters are several authors with whom Levantine Cultural Center has previously collaborated:

Mohja Kahf: poet, novelist, criticBorn in Damascus, Syria, Mohja Kahf is associate professor of comparative literature at the University of Arkansas. Her books include a novel, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (Perseus, 2006), a poetry book, E-mails from Scheherazad (U Press of Florida, 2003), and a book of scholarship, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman (U Texas, 1999). Kahf immigrated to the US in 1971 as a young child with her parents. She has lived for spells in the Arab world as an adult, and visits it regularly with her children. Her study of early Muslim women, "Braiding the Stories: The Eloquence of Women in Early Islam" appears in Gisela Webb's Windows of Faith: US Muslim Women Scholar Activists. Her poems were projected in giant lights on the façade of the New York Public Library as part of an installment project, "For the City," that included work by Mahmoud Darwish as well. Kahf's poetry has also appeared in more conventional venues such as the literary journals Mizna, Banipal, the Paris Review, and the Atlanta Review. Kahf is finishing a poetry manuscript about Hajar, Sarah, and Abraham, and working on a book of essays on faith experiences, women, the body, and interfaith conversations.

Lisa Suhai Majaj: scholar and poetLisa Suhair Majaj, a Palestinian-American writer and scholar, was born in Iowa, raised in Amman, Jordan, and educated at the American University of Beirut and at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her academic affiliations have included College of the Holy Cross, Amherst College, and Northeastern University. Her articles on Arab-American literature have appeared internationally in a number of books and journals, and she is currently co-editing an anthology of Arab-American Literature for Rutgers University Press. She is also co-editor of three collections of critical essays: Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers (Garland/Routledge 2000), Etel Adnan: Critical Essays on the Arab-American Writer and Artist (McFarland Publishing 2002), and Intersections: Gender, Nation and Community in Arab Women's Novels (Syracuse University Press, 2002). In addition to her scholarly work, Majaj is also a creative writer, and has published poetry and creative nonfiction in more than fifty journals and anthologies in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East. She has been an invited poet and speaker at many cultural and academic institutions across the U.S., as well as in Germany, Bahrain, Jordan, Jerusalem, the West Bank and Cyprus. Her poetry has been used in art installations, photography exhibits and political forums, as well as in more traditional venues, and has been translated into Arabic, Hebrew, Greek and German. Her poetry manuscript Geographies of Light recently won the Del Sol Press Poetry Prize and is forthcoming. She lives in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Gregory Orfalea: historian of the Arab American experienceGregory Orfalea is the author of nine books, including the just-released Angeleno Days: An Arab American Writer on Family, Place, and Politics (University of Arizona, 2009), which celebrated essayist Richard Rodriguez has called "delightful and wise—I don't think Los Angeles has ever received such lovely valentines from a native son." Naomi Shihab Nye found it "a wonderful book (by a) stunning writer." And James Fallows had this to say: "Southern California has produced its distinct literary voices, from Nathaniel West and Joan Didion to Walter Mosley and Michael Connelly. Gregory Orfalea is the next in this series, with his moving essays about a Southern California culture that will ring true to locals and surprise many outsiders."

Orfalea's first collection of short stories, The Man Who Guarded the Bomb, will appear in Fall 2009 on Syracuse University Press. He has directed the writing program at Pitzer College of the Claremont Colleges in California and currently is teaching Arab American Literature at Georgetown University. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Orfalea divides his time between L.A. and Washington, D.C.