The Arab American Civic Council proudly announced today that Dr. Sarah Gualtieri has been confirmed to deliver the keynote address at its inaugural ‘Arab American Heritage Gala on Sunday, April 24, at the Pacific Hills Banquet Hall in Laguna Hills.

Sarah Gualtieri is Associate Professor in the Departments of History and American Studies and Ethnicity and former Director of the Middle East Studies Program at USC.  Trained in Middle East Studies at McGill University and at the University of Chicago, her research focuses on questions of race, gender, and migration. Specifically, she explores the movement of peoples and ideas from greater Syria to the Americas and has written on the theoretical, social and empirical implications of this movement. Conducting research in Arabic, French, Spanish and English, she has travelled extensively in the Middle East and lived for two years in Damascus, Syria.  Her research bridges several emerging fields, notably Middle Eastern Migration Studies, Arab American Studies, and Transnational American Studies. Gualtieri’s publications include a number of articles as well as her book Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (University of California Press, 2009). The book examines the history of Arab racial formation in the United States with a particular focus on the problematic of “whiteness.” It traces how Arabs came to be officially classified as white by the U.S. government, and how different Arab groups interpreted, accepted, or contested this racial classification over the course of the 20th century. Gualtieri is now working on a project entitled “The Lebanese in Los Angeles: Migration and Transnationalism in a Multi-racial Landscape.”

At USC, Prof. Gualtieri teaches undergraduate courses on Women and Revolution in the Middle East, the Modern Middle East, Race and Class in Los Angeles, Arabs in America, and a graduate seminar in Critical Studies of Whiteness. She is currently supervising several Ph.D. theses on topics ranging from U.S. imperial interests in the Middle East, to Afro-Arab encounters, and Palestinian cinema; and is a member of several other dissertation committees. She is a recipient of two undergraduate teaching awards.