MUSLIM ROOTS/ ROUTES IN THE AMERICAS

 Muslims’ roots in the Americas are centuries old despite their presence being considered a recent phenomenon. This legacy emerges from migratory movements from the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia, which were precipitated by multiple and intersecting factors. This course will trace and examine the historical and contemporary waves of Muslim and Arab (forced) migrations into the Americas to explore how empire, globalization, and war have influenced the flow of people across borders and shaped policies and ideas of belonging in receiving nation-states. We will focus on Arab and Muslim identity in light of gendered, ethnoreligious, class, and national affiliations and investigate the racialization of Islam and the gendered-Orientalist constructions of Arabs and Muslims in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean (with particular emphasis on Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, Cuba, and others). Through interdisciplinary texts and a comparative framework, we will trace how specific diasporic Muslim and Arab subjects have been imagined, received, incorporated or altogether rejected into host nation-states.