Researching Middle Eastern and North African American Histories in the US National Archives: A Reflection on Method

Abstract How can researchers push against the organizational logics of a major US archive to locate Arab and other Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) American people as complex human actors, rather than as objects of state scrutiny, policing, and profiling? Can a repository like the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) be a site of repair (both in terms of the logics of its holdings and in terms of access)? This article reflects on a collaborative research project in which four scholars of Arab American and US Muslim studies used the National Archives to study MENA American racialization. It focuses on the themes of empire, activism, surveillance, and coalition to chart a long history of MENA American community-formation; and it offers a critical methodology of using alternative subject categories and pairing with community archives. The authors thus contribute to an urgent conversation around feminist archival methods as they relate to MENA American histories.