Rachel A. Norman

The Body That Speaks: Language in Contemporary Arab American Literature maps how Arab North American artists and writers manipulate language hierarchies to send multilayered messages to diverse audiences. These linguistic rebellions are profoundly hopeful acts, rearranging understandings of time and space to create new ways of belonging. The project traces representations of Arabic in Canada, Mexico, and the United States via close readings of transliterated, translated, and transcribed Arabic in visual and literary texts to document how authors resist language’s role in maintaining harmful power dynamics.