Remembering Alixa Naff: “The Mother” of Arab American Studies

http://www.aaiusa.org/remembering-alixa-naff-the-mother-of-arab-american-studies

From 2013: "Alixa Naff, considered “the mother” of Arab American Studies, established the Faris and Yamna Naff Arab American Collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. In the summer of 1962, she traveled the United States in a blue Volkswagen beetle, known as “the camel,” conducting oral interviews with the first generations of Arab American immigrants and collecting their photographs and artifacts. This growing collection, donated to the Smithsonian in 1984 but maintained and supplemented by Naff for years afterward, offers an invaluable resource for those attempting to understand and communicate Arab American history."