Biography

I'm an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Oregon, where I also serve as Editor of the journal Comparative Literature. My work explores the intersections of colonial and postcolonial studies, film and visual culture, and world literature, with a particular focus on Arabic, Francophone, and Anglophone literary traditions.

I began my academic journey at Brown University, where I graduated magna cum laude with honors in History and Modern Culture and Media. I later earned my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, with a designated emphasis in Film Studies. My dissertation was co-chaired by Judith Butler and Karl Britto and laid the foundation for my first book, In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016), which was honored with the Modern Language Association Prize for a First Book.

Currently, I have two forthcoming books: Cinema Before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham University Press) and The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arabic Literature, co-edited with Zeina G. Halabi. These projects reflect my ongoing interest in the global circulation of media across and beyond the Arab world. I am in the process of writing How Language Became Data, a book investigating information systems in the Middle East (the telegraph, typewriter, radio, and telephone) and their implications for the study of world literature.

Over the years, I have held fellowships with the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the Columbia Society of Fellows in the Humanities, and the Forum Transregionale Studien in Berlin. I have shared my research through lectures and conferences around the world—from Georgetown University in Qatar and the University of Minnesota to Dongguk University in South Korea and the University of Cape Town.

At the University of Oregon, I have served in various leadership roles, including the Director of Graduate and Undergraduate Studies in Comparative Literature and the Director of Middle East Studies. My teaching spans topics such as visual culture, secularism, postcolonial theory, and world cinema, and I have mentored a wide range of graduate and undergraduate students across disciplines.

Beyond teaching and research, I am involved in editorial work and professional service. I sit on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including Comparative Literature Studies, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, Philological Encounters, the Journal of World Literature, Journal of Digital Islamicate Research, and Critical South Asian Studies. I have also organized international conferences and workshops on themes ranging from multilingualism in the Maghreb to the aesthetics of dissent in the Arab world.

My work draws primarily from English, French, and Arabic, and I have studied Kiswahili, Spanish, and German. My research has been shaped by time spent living and working in Egypt, Morocco, Germany, Japan, and France—experiences that continue to inform my thinking about language, media, and global literary traditions.