And here is their blurb from the event:

In partnership with Project Khalid and the CUNY Graduate Center: Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, The New York Public Library is proud to organize an evening event — with scholars, the Lebanese Ambassador to the United States, and acclaimed journalist Rami Khouri — to celebrate the centennial of the first Arab American novel. In 1911, Dodd, Mead, and Co. in New York City published Ameen Rihani’s The Book of Khalid, a story of two boys from Lebanon who immigrate to the Little Syria neighborhood in Lower Manhattan and peddle on the streets. After exposure to the New York artistic and cultural environment of the period, the two return to Lebanon where, inspired by their New York experiences, they transform into political and social revolutionaries and become in conflict with the ruling Ottoman Empire. The work is considered the foundation of Arab American literature and is seen as a crucial influence on Kahlil Gibran’s famous work The Prophet (1923). Its author, Ameen Rihani (1876-1940), acted as the chief Arab American public intellectual in New York in the early 20th century and dedicated his life to teaching Americans about Arab history and culture.

Dozens of events have taken place around the world to celebrate the centennial year of the novel, and nearly all of the major Arab media sources have reported on these activities, especially given the work’s uncanny connection to the recent turmoil in the region. Returning to Rihani’s home here in New York, this event matches the full-day symposium organized by the United States Library of Congress on March 29. The New York Public Library is an especially appropriate venue as Rihani, who had no formal education, developed his literary knowledge from its holdings. With an introduction by Lebanese Ambassador to the United States Antoine Chedid, our panelists for the evening will be Todd Fine, director of Project Khalid, and Akram Khater, a Professor of History at North Carolina State University. Mr. Fine will talk about Ameen Rihani and The Book of Khalid, and Dr. Khater will speak about Little Syria in Lower Manhattan at the turn of the twentieth century. Journalist Rami Khouri will direct discussion and questions.

Todd Fine, the Director of Project Khalid, the centennial campaign for The Book of Khalid, is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the editor of a new critical edition of The Book of Khalid under advance contract with Syracuse University Press. At Harvard, Mr. Fine worked for Samuel P. Huntington as a research assistant for two years on his book on American identity and immigration, entitled Who Are We? (Simon and Schuster, 2004). He also organized and developed the Global Zero campaign on nuclear weapons, which launched in Paris, France in December 2008.

A native of Lebanon, Dr. Akram Khater holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. His books include Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921, A History of the Middle East: A Sourcebook for the History of the Middle East and North Africa, and Embracing the Divine: Gender, Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East, 1720-1798. Currently, he is producing a PBS documentary on the history of the Lebanese community in North Carolina. He sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Rami Khouri is the Director of the Issam Fares Institute of Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is an internationally syndicated political columnist and author and serves as editor-at-large of the Beirut Daily Star newspaper.

Yet, the neighborhood, because of the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and the World Trade Center, has been devastated physically unlike any other in New York, and sadly, despite Washington Street overlapping with the 9/11 Memorial and the site of the South Tower of World Trade Center (where it is especially important to emphasize the long and patriotic history of Arabs in the United States), little has been done to preserve or memorialize this neighborhood. There are no plaques or signs, and many important historical buildings have been demolished without a second thought.

Fortunately, by a kind of miracle, three buildings remain and are physically connected: 103 Washington Street, an Arab church that served as a Irish bar for many years; 105-107 Washington Street, a community house inaugurated by the governor of New York to serve the Little Syria neighborhood; and 109 Washington Street, a tenement building still containing apartments. Tens of millions of tourists will walk every year from the Battery Park and the Statue of Liberty to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum — all through historic Arab New York! — and these three buildings deserve to be preserved as landmarks to leave some general trace of an ethnic neighborhood that has been devastated like no other in the city. Yet, it looks like the community center is in immediate danger of demolition and this trinity of building is in jeopardy.

Therefore, together with Carl Antoun, a Lebanese-American undergraduate studying International Culture Studies and Political Science at Saint Francis College in Brooklyn Heights, New York, whose family once lived and worked on Washington Street, I have founded Save Washington Street, a national coalition of organizations and individuals advocating the preservation of the last remaining traces of the Washington Street neighborhood of the Lower West Side.

We believe that this neighborhood, one of the oldest parts of the city and which has had its ethnic history diminished and denied and has endured more demolition and destruction than any other neighborhood, deserves to have its few remaining historical traces preserved for posterity, and I urge you to sign our petition at savewashingtonstreet.org.

The award ceremony will be a free event at the Carnegie Institution for Science at 1530 P Street NW on Thursday, September 29 at 8 PM. I would encourage all admirers of Rihani in Washington, D.C. metro area to attend, and you can click here to RSVP online. Business attire is suggested.

The full award-winners are:

Loom by Thérése Souk ar Chehade
Arab Americans in Toledo: Cultural Assimilation and Community Involvement by Samir Abu-Absi
Tocqueville by Khaled Mattawa
Saving Sky by Diane Stanley

2011 HONORABLE MENTIONS

Barefoot in Baghdad by Manal Omar
This Isa Nice Neighborhood by Farid Matuk
Time To Pray by Maha Addasi

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Ameen Rihani

The full citation is: F. Medici, “Figli dei cedri in America. Il carteggio tra Gubran Khalil Gubran e Amin Faris al-Rihani”, La rivista di Arablit, anno I, numero 1, giugno 2011, pp. 83-112.

Below is the description from the New York Public Library’s website, and I hope you will mark the event on your calendar. This evening will serve as the foundation of a week of events in the city to celebrate Rihani and the centennial of his greatest work.

In partnership with Project Khalid and the CUNY Graduate Center: Middle East and Middle Eastern American Center, the New York Public Library is proud to organize an evening event to celebrate the centennial of the first Arab American novel. In 1911, Dodd, Mead, and Co. in New York City published Ameen Rihani’s The Book of Khalid, a story of two boys from Lebanon who immigrate to the Little Syria neighborhood in Lower Manhattan and peddle on the streets. After exposure to the New York artistic and cultural environment of the period, the two return to Lebanon where, inspired by their New York experiences, they transform into political and social revolutionaries and become in conflict with the ruling Ottoman Empire. The work is considered the foundation of Arab American literature and is seen as a crucial influence on Kahlil Gibran’s famous work The Prophet (1923). Its author, Ameen Rihani (1876-1940), acted as the chief Arab American public intellectual in New York in the early 20th century and dedicated his life to teaching Americans about Arab history and culture.

A native of Lebanon, Dr. Akram Khater holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in History from the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of California, Berkeley, respectively. His books include Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender and the Making of a Lebanese Middle Class, 1861-1921, A History of the Middle East: A Sourcebook for the History of the Middle East and North Africa, and Embracing the Divine: Gender, Passion and Politics in the Christian Middle East, 1720-1798. Currently, he is producing a PBS documentary on the history of the Lebanese community in North Carolina. He sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

This is a great time to raise the topic as I will be in New York this week for a series of events related to Rihani. I will be speaking about the centennial of The Book of Khalid at two dinners (the Women’s National Republican Club on May 24 and the Salaam Club on May 25). And, on Thursday, May 26, the Arab-American National Museum is holding a fundraiser to support a photography exhibit on Little Syria itself.

If you have any question about my “dream” or about the centennial of The Book of Khalid, please call me at +1 857.234.0920 or email me at toddfine@projectkhalid.org. Press are welcome to cover the events this week.

Next week, on Tuesday, May 24, 2011, Mr. Maher Kayyali, the chief editor of the Arab Institute for Research and Publishing will be speaking at the Women’s National Republican Club dinner in Manhattan to celebrate the centennial. I hope that admirers of Ameen Rihani in the New York area will be able to join us and listen to Mr. Kayyali, as well as Caroline Ziade, the Deputy Ambassador of Lebanon to the United Nations, and myself, Todd Fine. For more information about the dinner, please call me at +1 857.234.0920 or Carol Simon at the WNRC at +1 (212) 582.5454 ext. 2304.

The runners-up for the 2011 Ameen Rihani Scholarship were Firas Nasr, a Lebanese-American from Virginia entering Harvard, Princeton, Johns Hopkins, or University of Virginia; and Petra Bachour, a Syrian-American from Missour, entering the University of Minnesota.

1. American University of Beirut, Tuesday, April 26, 5:00pm-6:30, West Hall, Auditorium B

2. Lebanese American University, Wednesday, April 27, 4:00pm-5:00, Business School Building, Room 1003

3. Notre Dame University, Thursday, April 28

a. 11:15am-12:30pm, Abou Khater Auditorium, “Khalid’s Adventures in New York: The Book of Khalid and the American Ethnic Bildungsroman”

b. 5:45pm-6:15pm, Abou Khater Auditorium, “Ameen Rihani’s Reputation in the United States: The 100th Anniversary of the First Arab-American Novel”

Below is the standard description of the talk:

The 100th Anniversary of the First Arab-American Novel: Ameen Rihani’s Uncanny Message in The Book of Khalid

2011 brings the centennial anniversary of the first Arab-American novel: Ameen Rihani’s The Book of Khalid (1911). The story of two Lebanese boys who immigrate to New York City, the novel ambitiously confronts issues that concerned Rihani’s era and still confound our own: the ideal relations between Americans and Arabs, the problem of religious conflict in the Arab world and beyond, and the rightful position of Arabs within the great American story of immigration. Because of the novel’s extreme merit, historical importance, and contemporary relevance, a group of esteemed scholars and public figures have come together to establish Project Khalid, a coordinated effort to commemorate this important milestone in the history of Arab-American life and literature. Activities include preparing a new edition of the novel for schools and managing its distribution, hosting a public forum at the Library of Congress on 29 March 2011 and at the New York Public Library on 25 October, and using online and traditional media to promote the novel and Rihani’s legacy throughout the anniversary year.

Todd Fine, the project’s director, will introduce The Book of Khalid and will argue that the work, in addition to its extraordinary merit, has great relevance to the contemporary challenge in the Arab-American relationship and to the present situation in the region.

****

Todd Fine, the director of Project Khalid (www.projectkhalid.org), is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Harvard University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is the editor of a new critical edition of The Book of Khalid under advance contract with Syracuse University Press. At Harvard, Mr. Fine worked for Samuel P. Huntington as a research assistant for two years on his book on American identity and immigration, entitled Who Are We? (Simon and Schuster, 2004). He also organized and developed the Global Zero campaign on nuclear weapons, which launched in Paris, France in December 2008.

I sometimes say that here the overwhelming degree of symbols can even cause a sort of physical violence against the body and mind, a feeling of great offense that Rihani is not better known and studied. I hope that this BBC report will encourage more English speakers, in particular, to engage Rihani’s work and writing. The Book of Khalid can be read online at Project Gutenberg (direct link to HTML version).