عنوان

Disrupting the Western Gaze: An Arab-Islamic Intervention in Rhetoric and Composition Studies

Number

TL49948

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

Disrupting the Western Gaze: An Arab-Islamic Intervention in Rhetoric and Composition Studies

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Lana A. Oweidat

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

Ohio University

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2014

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

199

Text of Note

Committee members: Gradin, Sherrie; Holt, Mara; Negash, Ghirmai; Rouzie, Albert; White, Julie

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-0-438-09706-3

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

English (Arts and Sciences)

Body granting the degree

Ohio University

Text preceding or following the note

2014

Text of Note

Feminist rhetoricians, such as Wendy S. Hesford and Eileen E. Schell, criticize the field of Rhetoric and Composition for its limiting U.S. perspective and they call on scholars in the field to be more reflective on the American aspect of their works. They argue that many ironies have become evident in the field when taking into account transnational feminist rhetoric and postcoloniality. Answering their call for expanding the field's scope and focus, in this project I examine a series of cross-cultural encounters between the West and the Arab and Muslim worlds in the past and present and their ideological, political, and historical contexts, uncovering traces of discursive colonialist and Orientalist legacies disguised under the umbrella of multiculturalism. My examination reveals the prevalence of Islamophobia in the U.S. political, cultural, and thus academic scenes. I argue that encounters with Arab and Muslim Others are entangled in discourses of reduction, appropriation, Orientalism, and imperialism. Using a blend of rhetorical, postcolonial, and transnational feminist theories as my overarching theoretical lens, I explore the discursive construction of the Arab and Muslim agency through Western eyes, especially in the act of veiling. I examine the Muslim veil as site for the convergence of cross-cultural empathetic identification and the rhetoric of saving, which are both motivated by the imperial binaries of neoliberal feminist rhetoric. Against the backdrop of personal, statistical, anecdotal, and historical accounts of Islamophobia as a working discourse that affects the realities of Muslims and Arabs in the U.S. and around the world, I explore how the figure of the Muslim and Arab Other has been constructed as the West's new racial Other. I argue that little attention has been given to examining Islamophobia as a rhetorical racist discourse within which U.S. students are functioning. Therefore, it has become an ethical imperative for educators who are committed to issues of social justice and anti-racism to chart a new epistemological landscape by utilizing anti-Islamophobia pedagogical practices. I propose pedagogical conceptualizations that uncover the social, structural, and ideological dimensions through which Islamophobia as a racist discourse is constructed and enacted.

Ethics; Womens studies; Multicultural Education; Rhetoric

Subject Term

Language, literature and linguistics;Philosophy, religion and theology;Social sciences;Education;Islamophobia;Multiculturalism;Muslim veil;Orientalism;Transnational feminist rhetoric

Mokhtari, Abdelmadjid

Subdivision

English (Arts and Sciences)

Ohio University

Call Number

2061082161; 10891743

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y