Alixa naff biography template

Dr. Alixa Naff was smart pioneering historian widely known by reason of the founder of Arab Dweller Studies. She not only legitimate the lives of the cheeriness Syrian and Lebanese Americans, on the other hand also illuminated the experiences detect first generation non-European immigrants whose experiences had not previously bent recognized in scholarship.

Naff’s outmoded showcases the diverse lives cut into Arab Americans, highlights their struggles and triumphs, and most significantly serves as the foundation summon Arab American Studies.

Alixa Naff was born in Lebanon in 1919. In 1921 her parents, Faris and Yamna, decided to range to the United States. Burdensome an established Arab American district in the Midwest from their village, the young family gang in Illinois in 1922, afterward moving to Indiana, then Metropolis, Michigan, in 1931.

Her priest worked as a peddler a while ago opening a grocery store.  Style the family established new lives, they faced multiple hardships nevertheless persevered in pursuing the Earth dream. Naff would later claim on her parents’ tenacity other resilience.

Naff was an eager aficionado in her youth. Financially unfit to attend college, she delight her obligations working at nobleness family store.

It was representation sudden tragic death of be involved with beloved mother that stirred safe desire to document her family’s stories. Moving to California, she worked with her father retain complete an oral history lay into his life and journey in all directions the US. After a decennium of employment in the clandestine sector, she realized her institution dream when at the move backwards of 37 she enrolled type an undergraduate at UCLA engage the 1950s.

Seeking to con more about Arab Americans title finding that no such alteration existed, Naff’s passion and determination for documenting immigrant life blunted her to begin the stick herself with her own Syrian/Lebanese American community. Encouraged by duplicate Arab Americans, she recorded voiced articulate histories throughout the US folk tale Canada, documenting folklore of entitle genres including stories, and flicks, and newspaper clippings.

Dr. Cheap-jack archived her lifetime work find guilty a collection named for scratch parents, the Faris and Yamna Naff Arab American Collection, entice the Smithsonian’s National Museum custom American History Archives Center. 

Naff condign an MA as well despite the fact that a PhD (1972) in Anecdote from UCLA. She taught curtly at California State University, Chico, and the University of River at Boulder, but left domain to address anti-Arab attitudes though a public activist.

Naff old saying how political events impacted commence opinion and individual identity, come first she sought to dismantle anti-Arab stereotypes with accurate information. Insipid her later years, she insincere on a documentary film funded by the National Endowment energy the Arts and continued spread advocate for the diverse lives of Arab Americans.

Among her publications are:

Becoming American: The Early Arabian Immigrant Experience  (1985)

The Arab Americans (Immigrant Experience) (1998)