Strange/rs Together: Arab Women Art, Displacement, and Narrative
Open Access
- Author:
- Abu Bakr, Sarah W
- Graduate Program:
- Art Education
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- February 14, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Karen Treat Keifer-Boyd, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Karen Treat Keifer-Boyd, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Charles Richard Garoian, Committee Member
Kimberly Anne Powell, Committee Member
Gabeba Baderoon, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Arab
Arab Women
contemporary art
Displacement
Palestine
Arab identity
Women of Color
Feminist Theory
Postcolonial
Decolonial
Women's Studies
Mona Hatoum
Ghada Amer
Ghadah Alkandari
Hanaa Malallah
Bahia Shehab
Muslim Women
Exile
Refugee
Death
Narrative Inquiry
Autobiography
Storytelling - Abstract:
- In this dissertation, I examine meanings of displacement through a process of re-collecting and re-narrating stories of Arab women, as well as theorizing the artwork of Arab women artists. The Arab women discussed in this dissertation are Mona Hatoum, Ghada Amer, Ghadah Alkandari, Bahia Shehab, and Hanaa Malallah. The dissertation uses creative writing as a methodology of constructing an alternative narrative about Arab women that goes beyond the reduction committed by global media stereotypes. I also use the art encounter (or lack of) as a way of knowing, and discuss limits of access that Arab bodies need to negotiate in our current historical moment, where Arab refugee bodies in specific are causing a global crisis. My dissertation aims to shift the knowledge produced about Arab women from its historically Orientalist discourse towards an open-ended inquiry that regards situated knowledge and personal experience as its epistemic fuel.