Date of Award

8-23-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

Advisor(s)

Carol Fadda

Keywords

Arab;Druze;Gender;Memory;Transnational;Trauma

Abstract

My dissertation “Transnational Druze and Reincarnation: Remembering, Recording, and Reconnecting,” calls attention to transnational Druze communities in the U.S. and Lebanon, most notably to their fundamental belief in reincarnation, as an intervention into the fields of transnational, Arab American, memory, trauma, and gender studies of the U.S. and the Global South. In this research, I introduce the concept of "Druze afterlives" to provide a new way of understanding how empire, war, trauma, memory, and gender intersect within and across the borders, bodies, and stories of the transnational Arab world. Focusing my analyses on diverse and interdisciplinary textualizations of transnational Arab identities, cultures, and lived experiences across racial and ethnic frameworks and solidarities, in this project I address several key questions: What does it mean to inherit trauma and memory, not only from family or culture, but from a past life? How do the afterlives of traumatic experience continue to shape lives, experiences, memories, histories, (un)official archives, and politics across the transnational Arab world? What interventions can/do Druze experiences and stories make in individual, national, and global contexts? What future possibilities in seeing, listening to, understanding, and, ultimately, transforming the transnational Arab world are forged when we pay attention to its marginalized voices? In exploring these questions, I aim to accomplish a broader understanding of the multiplicity of Arab and transnational Arab identities and cultures, as well as highlight the profound theoretical significance of the Druze and Druze reincarnation across multiple and overlapping fields of thought, ultimately pushing scholarship on the transnational Arab world in new directions.

Access

Open Access

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