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This article, published by the Indiana Magazine of History and also available on Project Muse, is the first to document the historical significance of the Indianapolis-based Syrian Ark, the official newspaper of the Midwest Federation of Syrian American Clubs from 1936 to 1954. Extant copies of the periodical provide a detailed record of Arab, Syrian,…
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In the summer of 1936, Arab American Muslims from across the Midwest arrived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to celebrate the first anniversary of the Rose of Fraternity mosque, also known as the Moslem Temple. It was a joyous affair. Local community members Elaine Graham, Lucille Mann, and Margaret Hamad sang, “To a Wild Rose.” Participants…
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Originally published in Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History (Indiana Historical Society), Spring 2023: 5-13. By 1900 there were vibrant Arabic-speaking communities across Indiana, including in Indianapolis, Terre Haute, and Michigan City. But Fort Wayne was special, at least according to its Syrian residents. Alixa Naff, who developed the Smithsonian Institution’s collection on Arab American…
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For more than a decade, I have been in touch with colleagues in Sweden about a possible visit there to begin an exploration of the lives of Muslim and Arab Swedes. I was finally able to follow through this month. My primary interlocutor was Dr. Frederic Brusi, a scholar of contemporary Sufism and an official…
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I decided not to attend the 2023 awards ceremony for the Great Lakes Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences because I had already committed to teach at an NEH institute just two days after, and I promised myself I would no longer do back-to-back business trips. So, I stayed at home…
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In addition to hitting the road for a multi-stop Heartland Muslim book tour in 2022, I really enjoyed spending time talking with other professors about the book on a variety of podcasts this year. I wrote Muslims of the Heartland for public, Midwestern audiences, the people who, like me, are descendants of the first Arabic-speaking…
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More than any other factor, the reason why I became a professional scholar of Islam and Muslim cultures is because of my undergraduate adviser, Prof. Vernon Schubel of Kenyon College. As a first-year student at Kenyon in the fall of 1989, I enrolled in a course on classical Islam. Vernon, as he invited us to…
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Originally from Belt Magazine: April 24, 2023 By Edward Curtis IV Around 1899, my great, great-grandfather, a man named Hanna Samaha, left his beautifully green three-thousand-foot-high village located in contemporary Lebanon where, on a clear day, you could see the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean. He landed at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi…
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While I was still writing Muslims of the Heartland: How Syrian Immigrants Made a Home in the American Midwest (NYU Press, 2022), I became determined to take the book back to the places where its stories unfolded from the 1890s to the 1940s. At first, I thought that perhaps I should do one big road…
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20 Community Orgs To Get $250 Each Indiana Humanities, a statewide nonprofit that encourages Hoosiers to think, read and talk, is offering stipends to nonprofit organizations across the state to host screenings and discussions of the film Arab Indianapolis: A Hidden History. Arab Indianapolis: A Hidden History, hosted by author and IUPUI Professor Edward E.…
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Edward E. Curtis IV 