Introduction‪.‬

In the original call for papers for "Arabesque: Arabic Literature in Translation and Arab Diasporic Writing," this special number of Studies in the Humanities, we sought papers on a variety of topics concerning Arabic writers in translation and Arab-diasporic authors. Compared to a decade ago, Arab and Arab diasporic writers are now much more well known. Politics alone would have raised a global awareness of Arab culture. Yet the expansion of Arab culture through emigration and a new-found pride in Arab identity have also had a role. The purpose of this volume is not, therefore, to introduce Western readers to a new literature, but rather to open up a series of dialogues about literatures. Dialogues often begin with a question and there are a number of questions that may be asked about Arabic writing. We posed these in the original call: What creates home and identity? How do ethnicity, gender, religion, and politics operate? How do literary works historicize and open up debates about gender, sexuality, and feminism in Arab, Arab-American, and other Anglophone cultures? Certainly the same questions could be asked of any group of writers with a shared sense of ethnic identity, but for Arab writers, the answers will be somewhat different.