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Contact me.
- Email: drennan [at] panix [dot] com
- Twitter: AdoptionHonesty
- Instagram: danieldrennanelawar
Academic Writing
I’ve uploaded papers, conference presentations, articles, etc. to Academia.edu [link]. Much of what is found here is kept there as downloadable PDFs.
Author Archives: Daniel Drennan ElAwar
Von Coates: Rest in Peace.
This will be short as I won’t pretend that I knew Von Coates other than through years of reading her blog as well as some email correspondence. Nonetheless, I was very saddened to hear of her passing recently. Quoting her … Continue reading
Posted in Announcements
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بِلَال (Bilal)
Bilal is the name of a song just released by the Lebanese rap artist El Rass [Twitter: @El_Rass]. I know of El Rass’s music through my cousin Jamal [Imdb: Jamal Awar]. More often than not during drives up to Qurnayel … Continue reading
Posted in family, Media, Qurnayel
Tagged Bilal, Black Lives Matter, El Rass, Jamal Awar, Lebanon, music, rap
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Adoption Initiative statement on #BlackLivesMatter
This statement was written on behalf of The Adoption Initiative [Twitter: @AdoptionConf], the conferences of which I have had the pleasure of working on and presenting at for eight years now. The Initiative’s 20th anniversary conference was planned for this … Continue reading
Adoptive Parents! Not Your Story to Tell.
[Update: Some fellow adoptees and myself are working on a statement concerning this book and its promotion; stay tuned!] Are you tired of adopters telling our stories? So am I. I received word of a Zoom event taking place via … Continue reading
On promotion, tenure, academia, and teaching.
I returned from Lebanon in 2016, after finishing up a fellowship at the Asfari Institute for Civil Society and Citizenship at the American University of Beirut [link]. Twelve years after having arrived in the country as an adoptee returned, I … Continue reading
“What It Cost to be Adopted” by Michele Merritt
I was honored to have participated in this much-needed rebuttal to the ever-repugnant New York Times’ article, “What I Spent to Adopt my Child”. Quoting from the piece: The New York Times (NYT) recently published a piece, “What I Spent … Continue reading
Posted in Adoption Reading, Outspoken adoptees
Tagged adoption, adoption cost, The New York Times
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The ignoble, offensive, and destructive #NAAM
In November, 2013, over the course of the month, I collected various responses I had given on Yahoo! Answers and the like concerning the topic of adoption. It was a response to National Adoption Awareness Month, a thirty-day celebration of … Continue reading
On Extirpation, Rerooting, and Creative Liberation
Maymanah Farhat contacted me to write a two-paragraph art review for Jadaliyya’s 2018 end-of-year art review. I wrote the following instead. With special thanks to Maymanah for follow-up reference to the El-Khiam prison art collection, and to Lara Atallah for … Continue reading
Posted in Art, Worthwhile Commentary
Tagged Arab world, Beirut, Canada, decolonization, immigration, protest art, radical art, Vancouver
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Parsing and decolonizing the mediation of Canadian immigration narratives
This paper is a response to an article that appeared in the Tyee [link: https://thetyee.ca/%5D. Below is a link to download the PDF file.
Existence is Resistance: The BDS and Land Back Movements
This statement is in response to the Vancouver City Council’s recent resolution targeting BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions). It has been updated to reflect growing local efforts in support of the Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and protests concerning the construction of … Continue reading →