UA News

University of Michigan anthropologist Andrew Shryock will discuss the rise of the Arab-American enclave in Detroit and how it has flourished this decade.

Andrew Shryock, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, will give this year's Sabbagh lecture.

Shryock's lecture, "Best of Times/Worst of Times: Citizenship and Its Contradictions in Arab Detroit,"  is Thursday, Feb. 26, at 7 p.m. at the Arizona Historical Society, at 949 E. Second Street in Tucson, on the corner of Park and Second Street.

Both the lecture and the reception that follows are free and open to the public.

Andrew Shryock has done ethnographic research in Yemen, Jordan and among the Arab and Muslim communities of Detroit. Shryock's published works include "Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan," which won the 1997 Albert Hourani Prize. His other books include "Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream" (2000) and "Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture" (2004).

Next year, Shryock's latest work on Detroit will appear in "Citizenship and Crisis: Arab Detroit after Sept. 11." The Detroit Arab-American Study, or DAAS, which is based on interviews with more than a thousand Arab-Americans, produced findings that were both expected and surprising.

Shryock's lecture will focus on the counterintuitive lessons this study can teach us about Arab Americans and the complex worlds they have created in Detroit.

Among the most puzzling developments of the post-Sept. 11 era is the dramatic upsurge in political, economic and cultural influence experienced by Detroit's Arab Muslim community. New mosques have been built. Arabs are being elected to public office. Museums, festivals and cultural events are flourishing.

Greater Detroit's Arab population is growing, even as the city's non-Arab sector steadily loses population. During a period where the U.S. in fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, why is Arab Detroit doing so well?

Shryock will argue that Arab Detroit is perched on the edge of American national identity and that tremendous effort must be exerted to create, for Arabs and non-Arabs alike, a convincing version of American citizenship that contains Detroit and its Arab and Muslim inhabitants.

The results are both inclusive and coercive, and they show the remarkable extent to which political crisis now determines the character of Arab-American citizenship.

The Sabbagh Lecture is presented by the anthropology department at The University of Arizona. These lectures focus on the Arab cultures of the Middle East from an anthropological perspective. Through the generosity of Tucsonans Entisar and Adib Sabbagh, an expert in Arab cultures is brought to campus each year for a public lecture and a master seminar for graduate students.

The Sabbaghs have sponsored the series for 17 years. Entisar (Vivi) Sabbagh is a doctoral graduate of the UA department of anthropology, and Dr. Adib Sabbagh is a Tucson cardiac surgeon. The Sabbaghs sponsor these lectures to enhance the public understanding and appreciation for the complexity and diversity of Arab cultures. The lectures also serve to enrich the curriculum of the department of anthropology by bringing to it the scholarship and learning of eminent scholars.