"Finding Islam in US Official Records on Ancestry, Ethnicity, and Race" with Randa Kayyali
Visiting Scholar Brown Bag Lecture Series
Wednesday, April 27, 2016 12:00 PM EDT
Commerce Building, Conference Room 3006
The national archives holds more than 10 billion records relating to immigration, census data, veteran records and other documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government. Most of what is searchable are records prior to 1955. Finding Islam in these institutional archives can be a challenge when the immigration records did not note religion and included names that were often changed or misspelled at the port of entry. Yet, there is a Muslim presence in all categories, sometimes contested, oftentimes not. This talk will focus on how immigration, naturalization and citizenship policies and official correspondence both supported and undermined the immigration of Muslims from Turkey, Syria and India between 1900 and 1955, with a focus on the racial, ethnic and religious identifications used by federal officials and by the immigrants themselves.
Randa Kayyali completed her Ph.D. in Cultural Studies at George Mason University and is currently a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Ali Vural Ak Center for Global Islamic Studies. During her time at the Center, Kayyali has been conducting research for her project, titled "Finding Islam in US Official Records on Ancestry, Ethnicity, and Race", which aims to trace the connection of religion to regional, ethnic, and racial ascriptions of Americans who are Muslim as well as those who are assumed to be Muslim by culture.
Held as part of the Spring 2016 AVACGIS Visiting Scholar Brown Bag Lecture Series
Lunch and refreshments served
