Deadline for submissions: June 1, 2017
Full name/name of organization: SAMLA / South Atlantic Modern Language Association
Contact email: mahwashshoaib@hotmail.com
This panel intends to examine the works of Muslim American poets, novelists, jazz musicians, punks, hip hop artists, mipsters, filmmakers, and visual artists. Muslims are woven into the American fabric, from the generations of Moorish slaves accompanying the conquistadors in the Southwest, enslaved West Africans such as those in the coastal Gullah communities, Arab laborers in the Midwest factories in the late 1800s, twentieth-century immigrants fueling the medical and technology sectors, to those currently displaced by wars and natural disasters.

Papers are invited that explore the diverse compositions of Muslim American identities in literary and cultural texts. With the theme of SAMLA 89, High Art/Low Art: Borders and Boundaries in Popular Culture (held in Atlanta, GA, Nov. 3-5, 2017), panelists are asked to consider how these writers and artists engage with popular culture in their articulation of assimilation, alterity, dissent, and transgression as Muslim Americans.

Please submit a 300-word abstract, with a short biography and A/V requirements, to Mahwash Shoaib (mahwashshoaib@hotmail.com) by June 1, 2017.