Contact Information
Research Interests
Modern Arabic and Arab diaspora literatures, postcolonial studies, narrative theory, translation studies, methods of comparative & world literature
Awards and Honors
President (2019-20), American Comparative Literature Association. Vice President (2018-19), Second Vice President (2017-18).
American Council for Learned Societies Fellowship, 2017.
University Scholar, UIUC, 2016-19.
Additional Campus Affiliations
Department of English, Department of French & Italian, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, Department of Asian American Studies, Program in Translation & Interpreting Studies, Center for African Studies, Center for Global Studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, European Union Center, Lemann Center for Brazilian Studies, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory
Highlighted Publications
Books:
Author, Arab Brazil: Fictions of Ternary Orientalism. Oxford University Press, 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-Arabic), لغز القاف from the Portuguese O enigma de Qaf (Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2004) by Alberto Mussa. Cairo, Egypt: The National Center for Translation, 2015. Novel.
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. Paperback 2014.
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.