About

I am an Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. I specialize in modern and contemporary literature in Arabic, English, French, and Spanish, focusing on trauma and memory, narrative theory, and world literature. 

My research focuses on the practice of narrating political violence. How do narratives give rise to violence? How is violence represented on the page? How do aspects of society, the nature of institutions, and other material realities shape those narratives? I address these questions through historically-informed analyses of literary fiction,  film, theater and other forms of visual art.

At present, I am finishing a monograph entitled The Accident of Atrocity: Narratives of Surviving Dispossession from Modern Lebanon , and have begun a second project on spirituality in speculative fiction in the Global South.

A New York City native, I spent 4 years as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. and Saudi Arabia before returning to academia. I received my PhD from Duke University’s Program in Literature in 2020.