An Imagined America: Language, Literacy, Identity, and Coloniality at Syrian Protestant College, 1866û1920
By Lisa R. Arnold
Copy edited by Karen P. Peirce. Designed by Mike Palmquist.
An Imagined America presents a historical, transnational, translingual, and decolonial perspective on questions of identity, literacy, language, culture, and citizenship. In examining a variety of English- and Arabic-language archival documents from the founding of Syrian Protestant College in 1866 (today the American University of Beirut) until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1920, Lisa R. Arnold shows how transnational and translingual negotiations among faculty, students, and administrators, as well as the local and regional community, produced a tenuous and sometimes unsettling vision of America for foreigners and locals alike. As her account shows, transnational and translingual discourses provide the backdrop and motive for the assertion of coloniality in contexts of literacy education such as that of Syrian Protestant College. An Imagined America allows scholars and educators in rhetoric and writing studies, education, and related fields to consider how literacy education in English has, and often continues to, construct an imagined America that is both grounded on and reproduces colonial epistemology. Such constructions work to uphold exclusionary practices that are all too vivid in our world today.
Table of Contents
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2. Syrian Protestant College Within Its Historical Context
3. Syrian Protestant College and the Exportation of America
4. Specters of America in Students’ Rhetorical Activism at Syrian Protestant College
5. Composing America at Syrian Protestant College
6. Imagining a Transnational and Translingual Past, Present, and Future
Appendix A. Student Demographics, Syrian Protestant College, 1866–1920
Appendix B. SPC Student-Authored Publications, 1899–1920
About the Author
Lisa R. Arnold is Associate Professor of English at North Dakota State University and was previously a faculty member at the American University of Beirut. Her research interests include the history of writing instruction worldwide, global rhetorics, transnational writing practices and pedagogy, and writing program administration. She has been published in a range of writing studies journals including College Composition and Communication, College English, Composition Studies, Journal of Writing Assessment, Research in the Teaching of English, and Pedagogy as well as in multiple edited collections. She is also the co-editor of Emerging Writing Research from the Middle East-North Africa Region (The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2017).
Publication Information: Arnold, Lisa R. (2025). An Imagined America: Language, Literacy, Identity, and Coloniality at Syrian Protestant College, 1866–1920. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/INT-B.2025.2678
Digital Publication Date: August 27, 2025
Print Publication Date: TBD
ISBN: 978-1-64215-267-8 (PDF) | 978-1-64215-268-5 (ePub) | 978-1-64642-821-2 (pbk.)
DOI: 10.37514/INT-B.2025.2678
Contact Information:
Lisa R. Arnold: lisa.r.arnold@ndsu.edu
International Exchanges on the Study of Writing
Series Editors: Series Editors: Steven Fraiberg, Michigan State University; Joan Mullin, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Magnus Gustafsson, Chalmers University of Technology; Anna S. Habib, George Mason University; and Terry Meyers Zawacki, George Mason University.
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Copyright © 2025 Lisa R. Arnold. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. 250 pages, with notes, figures, and bibliographies. This book will be available in print from University Press of Colorado as well as from any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in PDF and ePub formats for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website. For permission requests and other questions, such as creating a translation, please contact the copyright holder.