Center for Arab Narratives

Center for Arab Narratives Interdisciplinary and community-empowered research to improve the well being of Middle East/Southwest Asian and North African (MENA/SWANA) communities.

A program of ACCESS and the Arab American National Museum.

A wall is never just a wall in Beirut. In “A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut,” Nadine A. Sinno ...
08/28/2026

A wall is never just a wall in Beirut.

In “A War of Colors: Graffiti and Street Art in Postwar Beirut,” Nadine A. Sinno explores how graffiti functions as a living and ongoing dialogue.

🔗 Visit our link in bio for an interview with Nadine Sinno by Baladi

Co-Director Will Youmans’ insight into what it was like to work on the award-winning documentary “Who Killed Alex Odeh” ...
08/01/2026

Co-Director Will Youmans’ insight into what it was like to work on the award-winning documentary “Who Killed Alex Odeh” with Co-Director Jason Osder uncovers even more of the story.

Most people never heard about this brazen act of terrorism in the United States because of the ethnic identity of the victim. For decades, many in the Arab American community felt that the murder of Alex Odeh—and their grief—were treated as less important than other tragedies.

🔗 Read the full piece at our link in bio
🎟️ Purchase your ticket at bit.ly/odehmichigan

The Spring 2026 edition of the Bibliography of Arab and MENA American Studies, a collaboration between AANM and Center f...
07/31/2026

The Spring 2026 edition of the Bibliography of Arab and MENA American Studies, a collaboration between AANM and Center for Arab Narratives, is now available at arabnarratives.org/bibliography, happy researching!

07/21/2026

🍽️ CAN Director, Dr. Matthew Jaber Stiffler, contributed a chapter to "Arab American Public History" that explores how food tells the story of Dearborn's Arab American community from the inside.

"Yalla Eat! Walking an Arab American Food Landscape" pulls back the curtain on a community that is often seen but rarely understood.

🔗 Purchase the book at our link in bio

The AANM Yalla Eat Tours began in 2013 and have remained a popular staple of the museum ever since 🧆🫖 The program active...
07/16/2026

The AANM Yalla Eat Tours began in 2013 and have remained a popular staple of the museum ever since 🧆🫖
 
The program actively works against the thin construction of identity by combining food with a deeper context, conversing with actual Arab American business owners, absorbing the community’s history, and engaging with the Arab American community on its own terms for a 2-3 hour journey.
 
🔗 Read the full blog at our link in bio

07/08/2026

We read these words as aspirations for true freedom and equality for our communities in the United States and abroad, and for all peoples.

250 years ago these words rang true for some. We are working for a day when they will hold true for all.

For most of the 20th century, Arab Americans fought to be legally classified as White in order to access citizenship. Th...
07/01/2026

For most of the 20th century, Arab Americans fought to be legally classified as White in order to access citizenship. That apparent victory came with a cost. It made our communities nearly invisible in federal data for generations.

After 30 years of coalition building and advocacy, that changed. Federal agencies are now required to break out the MENA population when they collect data.

Our Director Dr. Matthew Jaber Stiffler wrote about what that fight meant, what it cost, and what comes next. Published in partnership with the @ Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Read the full blog at our link in bio 🔗

Scholarship on the Arab and MENA LGBTQIA+ community used to be scarce. That has changed, and the growing body of work sp...
06/30/2026

Scholarship on the Arab and MENA LGBTQIA+ community used to be scarce. That has changed, and the growing body of work spans mental health, activism, intersectional identity, and generational shifts within the community.

Research like this often gets lost between disciplines or buried in journals few people outside academia ever see. The Bibliography of Arab and MENA American Studies brings scholarship like this into one place so it can be found, used, and built upon.

Explore it at our link in bio 🔗

Who gets to tell the story of a community matters.In her article published in Ethnic Studies Review, Professor Tahereh A...
06/23/2026

Who gets to tell the story of a community matters.

In her article published in Ethnic Studies Review, Professor Tahereh Aghdasifar of Pitzer College examines how donor-funded university centers shape what gets studied and whose experiences get centered in diaspora scholarship. Using Iranian diaspora studies as a case study, she shows how wealth determines whose voices build the record and whose get left out.

The implications reach every diaspora community, including Arab and MENA Americans. That is exactly why CAN is committed to research that begins and ends in community.

Read the full article at our link in bio 🔗

Tonight, "The Sheik" screens at the Senate Theater in Detroit, presented with the Arab American National Museum as part ...
05/08/2026

Tonight, "The Sheik" screens at the Senate Theater in Detroit, presented with the Arab American National Museum as part of the 2026 Arab Film Festival.

The 1921 Rudolph Valentino film shaped how Americans imagined the Arab world for decades. We surfaced a lesser-known side of that impact. Arab American entrepreneurs across the country took the Hollywood fantasy and built something real from it, restaurants, community anchors, and commercial identities that stretched from New York to southern California for generations.

Read the full piece at our link in bio 🔗

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Dearborn, MI
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