I am an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. My research centers on twentieth- and twenty-first century cultural production from North Africa and the Middle East, with an emphasis on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. I write and teach across the fields of Arabic and Francophone literatures, aesthetic theory, Islamic philosophy, film and visual culture, speculative fiction, as well as gender and sexuality studies. I specialize in Arabophone and Francophone literature, visual culture, and criticism of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia).
Recherches en cours
CURRENT RESEARCH
الابحاث الحالية
My current book project, Printed Matter(s): Critical Histories of Maghrebi Cultural Journals, theorizes twentieth-century Arabophone, Francophone, and bilingual journals from the Maghreb. Bridging the humanities and social sciences, Maghrebi cultural journals serialized and published fiction, alongside literary criticism, art and aesthetic theory, as well as political and social commentary. I argue that they reflect a view of cultural edification in which knowledge formation is a mediated and shared social praxis. To that end, the study investigates the concepts, intellectuals, and readership networks that Maghrebi cultural journals staged across North and Sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. These rhizomatic flows of cultural capital signal subversive geopolitical exchanges operating outside the dominant logics of colonial mediation.