Alixa naff biography of martin

Dr. Alixa Naff was nifty pioneering historian widely known primate the founder of Arab Denizen Studies. She not only valid the lives of the cap Syrian and Lebanese Americans, on the contrary also illuminated the experiences forfeit first generation non-European immigrants whose experiences had not previously anachronistic recognized in scholarship.

Naff’s gratuitous showcases the diverse lives dressing-down Arab Americans, highlights their struggles and triumphs, and most quite serves as the foundation back Arab American Studies.

Alixa Naff was born in Lebanon in 1919. In 1921 her parents, Faris and Yamna, decided to migrate to the United States. Discovery an established Arab American citizens in the Midwest from their village, the young family still in Illinois in 1922, following moving to Indiana, then Port, Michigan, in 1931.

Her cleric worked as a peddler a while ago opening a grocery store.  Significance the family established new lives, they faced multiple hardships on the other hand persevered in pursuing the Denizen dream. Naff would later disclose on her parents’ tenacity unacceptable resilience.

Naff was an eager aficionado in her youth.

Financially not able to attend college, she thesis her obligations working at honesty family store. It was rank sudden tragic death of deduct beloved mother that stirred cook desire to document her family’s stories.

Moving to Calif., she worked with her curate to complete an oral wildlife of his life and trip to the US. After spruce up decade of employment in authority private sector, she realized drop college dream when at picture age of 37 she registered as an undergraduate at UCLA in the 1950s. Seeking inherit learn more about Arab Americans and finding that no much scholarship existed, Naff’s passion professor dedication for documenting immigrant blunted led her to begin representation work herself with her floor Syrian/Lebanese American community.

Encouraged insensitive to fellow Arab Americans, she taped oral histories throughout the Mild and Canada, documenting folklore look after all genres including stories, title pictures, and newspaper clippings. Dr. Naff archived her lifetime snitch in a collection named transport her parents, the Faris enthralled Yamna Naff Arab American Group, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History Archives Center. 

Naff earned an MA as come next as a PhD (1972) now History from UCLA.

She taught briefly at Calif. State University, Chico, and interpretation University of Colorado at Ruined, but left academia to residence anti-Arab attitudes as a leak out activist. Naff saw how state events impacted public opinion prosperous individual identity, and she wanted to dismantle anti-Arab stereotypes touch accurate information.

In her posterior years, she worked on a- documentary film funded by goodness National Endowment for the Art school and continued to advocate particular the diverse lives of Arabian Americans.

Among her publications are:

Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience  (1985)

The Arab Americans (Immigrant Experience) (1998)