Professor
Research Interests
Modern Arabic, Anglophone, Francophone, and Lusophone literatures, postcolonial studies, narrative theory, translation studies, methods of comparative & world literature
Education
Ph.D. Comparative Literature, UIUC (1998)
MA French Language and Literature, UIUC (1993)
MA English and Comparative Literature, The American University in Cairo (1990)
BA English Language and Literature (magna cum laude), King Saud University (1986)
Awards and Honors
- Second Vice President (January 2025-January 2026), Modern Language Association of America. To become Vice President in 2026-27, President in 2027-28.
- University Scholar, 2016-2019
- President, American Comparative Literature Association, 2019-2020
- American Council for Learned Societies fellowship, 2017
Additional Campus Affiliations
- Department of Comparative & World Literature
- Department of English
- Department of Spanish & Portuguese
- Department of Asian American Studies
- Center for African Studies
- European Union Center
- Center for Global Studies
- Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
- Center for South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies
- Program in Translation & Interpreting Studies
- Lemann Institute for Brazilian Studies
- Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Highlighted Publications
Books:
- Editor, O mundo árabe e o Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Edições Makunaima, 2024.
- Author, Arab Brazil: Fictions of Ternary Orientalism. Oxford University Press, March 2024.
- Co-editor (with Rogério Lima), Literatura e (i)migração no Brasil/Literature and (Im)migration in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro: Edições Makunaima, 2020.
- Editor, The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions. Oxford University Press, 2017.
- Translator (Portuguese to Arabic), لغز القاف, by Alberto Mussa. Cairo: National Center for Translation, 2015.
- Co-Editor (with Susan Muaddi Darraj), Approaches to Teaching the Works of Naguib Mahfouz. MLA Publications, 2012.
- Author, Immigrant Narratives: Orientalism and Cultural Translation in Arab American and Arab British Literature. Oxford University Press, 2011.
- Translator (Arabic-English), Thou Shalt Not Speak My Language, from the Arabic لن تتكلم لغتي by Abdelfattah Kilito, with notes and a critical introduction. Syracuse University Press, 2008. Scholarly monograph. A 2009 Choice Outstanding Academic Title.
- Author, Tayeb Salih: Ideology and the Craft of Fiction. Syracuse University Press, 2003.
Special Issues:
- Geopolitics of Comparison: An ACLA Presidential Forum. Comparative Literature 73:3 (2021): 255-269.
- Arab Latin America. A special issue of Review 99: Literature and Arts of the Americas 52:2 (December 2019).
- Arabic Literature Now: Between Area Studies and the New Comparatism (with Amal Amireh). A Special issue of Comparative Literature Studies 47:4 (2010).
- Comparative (Post)colonialisms (with Rebecca Saunders). A special issue of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 23: 1-2 (2003).
- Études sur la littérature égyptienne (with Evelyne Accad). Special issue of Peuples méditerranéens / Mediterranean Peoples 77 October-December 1996.
- Nouvelles d’Égypte (with Evelyne Accad). Special issue of Peuples méditerranéens / Mediterranean Peoples 76 July-September 1996.