In just a few weeks, Pauline Homsi Vinson, a literature professor at Diablo Valley College just outside of Oakland, Calif. and co-founder of the Arab American Studies Association, will be packing her bags and heading to Dearborn for a year stint as a visiting professor and interim director of 萝莉社-Dearborn鈥檚 Center for Arab American Studies. Frankly, she couldn鈥檛 be more excited to get here 鈥 both to work with the faculty, staff and students who make the center tick and to embed in one of the largest and most vibrant Arab American communities in the United States. For our August "Campus Colleagues" interview, we called up Homsi Vinson to chat about her plans for her year on campus, where the discipline of Arab American Studies is headed, and why Dearborn is a dream destination if you鈥檙e a scholar in this area. Our conversation has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.
So I don鈥檛 know what it鈥檚 like demographically in the part of California where you live, but Dearborn is obviously a hotbed of Arab American culture. Is it exciting to think about being part of that for a year?
It is really exciting! I live in Oakland, and there is a sizable Yemeni community here, and there are Palestinians and Jordanians in San Francisco, just across the bay. And in the Silicon Valley area, there are a number of Lebanese Americans. But it鈥檚 kind of spread out, so it鈥檚 still an exciting thing when you see an Arab store or something. Obviously, in Dearborn, that鈥檚 not rare and it鈥檚 very common to hear people speaking Arabic. Where I am, the larger immigrant communities are Latino or Asian American, and I love going to those neighborhoods because there鈥檚 a sense of vitality that makes them interesting. So to see that in an Arab American context is going to be really exciting and different. This is a different part of the U.S. experience that鈥檚 not available just anywhere, and I think it surprises a lot of people that there is such a large and diverse Arab American community in a western suburb of Detroit.
So how did Arab American Studies become a passion of yours and eventually your main area of academic scholarship?
I鈥檓 Lebanese originally and I came to the United States when I was a teenager after the Lebanese Civil War, which is the experience of a lot of the immigrants in Dearborn as well. When I went to graduate school in the 1980s, Arab American Studies didn鈥檛 really exist yet. So I went into literature and was exploring comparative literature. The discipline was still very Eurocentric at that time, so it was difficult to find my niche. My dissertation at Northwestern was actually on Shakespeare and gender and representation, but at Northwestern, it was a feature of the program that you could teach one course outside of your specialty if it was something you had an interest in. So the chairperson of the department invited me to teach a course on Arabic literature in translation. And I did that, and I felt like I could definitely do more of this! At that time, there was also a flourishing of Arab American literature and scholarship, and so I ended up making the shift.
The way you describe the growth of Arab American Studies reminds me of a conversation I had with one of our faculty in African and African American Studies, which recently celebrated its 25th anniversary as a program. She said it was really interesting to think back on how much the discipline has changed between the 1990s and today. Can you talk about that a little bit in the context of Arab American Studies? Like, how have the focus and subjects and feel of the discipline evolved between then and now?
First, I want to acknowledge the work that鈥檚 been done in African American Studies, Chicano and Latinx Studies, Asian American Studies, other ethnic studies disciplines 鈥 as well as gender and women鈥檚 studies and diaspora studies. Those disciplines have really paved the way as a model for Arab American Studies. Originally, one of the central themes was invisibility: Joe Kadi refers to Arab Americans as the most invisible of invisibles in the 1994 book 鈥.鈥 And then, after 9/11, we shift from invisibility to hypervisibility. We became visible, but suspect, or people wanted to know more about Arabs, but in a way that still made them the other as opposed to a part of this society. And now, I feel like the field is at an exciting moment because it鈥檚 growing in interesting ways but also becoming really fluid. For example, the term 鈥淢iddle East鈥 is a legacy of colonialism in relation to Europe. And so there has been a shift to use the acronym SWANA, or Southwest Asian and North African communities. SWANA is a way to see connections between people not just of Arab backgrounds, but, say, Armenians or Armenian Americans or Iranians or Kurdish Americans, who are from that region, but have their own culture or language. So I love that the field is not trying to be rigid. We have Arab American Studies, but we also have Muslim American Studies, which can then include non-Arab populations like Afghanis and Pakistanis, who don鈥檛 identify as Arabs. So the field today has seen an explosion of creative output because writers and scholars are willing to explore all these intersections.
And can you tell us a little about what you鈥檇 like to bring to campus, both in the classroom and in your work at the center?
I鈥檓 very excited to be teaching. The course I have for the fall is Arab American Women Writers, and I have a flier, so please invite students to check it out because I love to teach and I think it鈥檚 my best way to get connected to the campus community. In the winter term, I鈥檒l be teaching Introduction to Arab American Studies, and I鈥檓 really excited about that too, because it goes beyond literature. As far as the center, it鈥檚 such a privilege and I鈥檓 grateful for all the people who put in the work to make this happen, particularly the center鈥檚 former director Sally Howell. I鈥檓 also excited to collaborate with the faculty who are associated with the center and related fields. I think I can learn a lot from them and bring in their expertise to help strengthen the center. One of the things I want to focus on is carrying on the work that Sally Howell has been doing with guest speakers. And I鈥檇 also like to continue the 鈥, which I think our featured speakers can contribute to as well.
Well, you seem really connected in this community 鈥 do you have some big names on your wish list who you'd like to bring to campus as a speaker?
I do! But I can鈥檛 say yet! One of the other hats I wear is President of the , and through my work in the association, I鈥檓 privileged to have met amazing scholars, writers and artists. So I think we鈥檒l have some great guests on campus soon.
Fair enough. You know, this is kind of an aside, but I鈥檓 wondering if in your conversations with folks, you get the sense that Dearborn is a known 鈥榯hing鈥 among Arab Americans across the country?
It鈥檚 definitely a known thing. The , for example, has done an amazing job of hosting conferences, like the Arab American Studies conference, so people definitely know about it. And people do know Dearborn as the center for Arabic sweets! The history goes back a long way 鈥 all the way back to people who immigrated to work in the auto factories at Ford, so it鈥檚 a very rich history. Of course, it鈥檚 not the only place Arab immigrants settled. New York City has the Little Syria community, where a lot of early intellectuals and writers like lived at the turn of the 20th century. There鈥檚 another center in Los Angeles. And I鈥檓 learning more and more about Arab American communities in Ohio and Texas and Indianapolis and places you wouldn鈥檛 expect. That鈥檚 part of the exciting work of Arab American Studies: uncovering that history of Arab American presence in the United States. But Dearborn, I have to say, is a place that鈥檚 definitely its own thing 鈥 and it鈥檚 definitely on the radar.
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Interview by Lou Blouin. Homsi Vinson also has a new co-edited book coming out this fall. "" features a collection of "the most foundational scholarship for the growing fields of Critical Muslim Studies and Critical SWANA Studies in the Americas."
