Charlotte Karem Albrecht

Charlotte Karem Albrecht's current project, "Peddling an Arab American History: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Syrian American Communities", proposes that gender, class, and sexuality are at the root of Arab American racialization. This work traces the anxieties surrounding Arab American migrant peddlers and their economic networks at the turn of the twentieth century and argues that this profession, which employed large numbers of men and women, constituted Arab immigrants as racial and sexual ‘others.’ Her research shows that the transience of male Syrian peddlers and the gender and sexual transgressions of female Syrian peddlers posed a threat to claims of Syrian whiteness.She uses theoretical frameworks from women of color feminist theory, post-colonial history, queer theory, and cultural studies to read for both the presences and absences of the Syrian peddler in archives of popular culture, social welfare, and the early Arab American community.

Prof. Karem Albrecht is beginning a second project that puts Arab American history in conversation with studies of U.S. settler colonialism. While Arab American studies scholarship has produced significant critiques of settler colonialism with regard to Palestinian liberation, there is a paucity of research regarding the relationship between Arab Americans and U.S. settler colonialism.

Affiliation(s)

• Faculty: Department of American Culture (AC), Arab and Muslim American Studies (AMAS)
  Faculty: Department of Women's Studies