The Pulse of Queer Life: Arab Bodies in Gay Bars

This lecture considers how Arab bodies are allowed to inhabit or are forbidden from gay spaces, particularly gay bars. It pairs two unlikely texts: the 2016 shooting at Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando by Pakistani American Omar Mateen, and the fictional account of intimacies between men in the post-revolutionary unnamed Arab country in the novel Guapa (2016) by Saleem Haddad. Guest lecturer Mejdulene Shomali argues that queer spaces — online and in real time — produce and preclude inclusion for Arab subjects across gender lines, often occluding femininity while simultaneously championing its manifestation in bodies assigned male at birth. Join us and guest lecturer Shomali as we explore how the framework of safety enables the marginalization of Arab subjects in the U.S. and in the fictional Arab world of Guapa, and consider the ramifications of Arab marginalization in queer Arab subjects in the U.S. and the Arab world.

This event is co-organized by the Arab American Cultural Center, Gender and Women’s Studies, the Racialized Body Cluster, and the University of Maryland Baltimore College’s Eminent Scholar Mentor Program.