Fields of Research:

Maghrebi and Sub-Saharan African Literatures in French, modern French poetry, the Qur'an and Arabic poetry, Chinese poetry (especially Tang and Qing), Korean poetry.

My current research in Arabic Literature explores the relationship between the Qur'an and Arabic poetry: al-Akhtal, Jamil, al-Mutanabbi, as well as pre-Islamic poets.  In East Asian Literatures, I am examining the rise of women poets in China and Korea and their relationship to their very long literary traditions.  In another ongoing project, I am resituating contemporary poetry of the Maghreb in a Mediterranean (rather than a "postcolonial") context, while also considering poets of Spain, France, Italy, Egypt and, eventually, Greece and Turkey who have similar concerns.  Finally, I am also beginning a project that involves regional music and dance of Argentina.
 

Selected Publications:

• Against the Postcolonial: ‘Francophone’ Writers at the Ends of French Empire. (Chapters on Yambo Ouologuem, Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo, Makhali-Phal, Jean Amrouche, and Léon-Gontran Damas) – Lexington Books, 2005.
• “Beyond the Length of an Average Penis: Reading across Traditions in the Poetry of Timothy Liu.”  Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature.  Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005,190-208.
• Neither a Borrower: Forging Traditions in French, Chinese and Arabic Poetry. Book including chapters on Buhturi, Wang Wei, Mallarmé, Segalen, the Classic of Poetry, and the Qur'an. (Legenda, press of the European Humanities Research Center at Oxford University, May 2002).
• "Makhali-Phal: Cambodian Dancing Girl at the Francophone Epicenter." Special issue, Literature and Society in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, (Journal of Commonwealth and Post-colonial Studies 7:2, Fall 2001, pp. 7-32).
• "Calixthe Beyala: Griotte Postmoderne ou Plagiaire?" Nouvelles écritures francophones: Vers un nouveau baroque? (Montréal: Presses Universitaires de Montréal, 2001, 338-346).
• "Translation and the Interlingual Text in the Novels of Rachid Boudjedra." Maghrebian Mosaic: A Literature in Transition. (Ed. Mildred Mortimer. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000, 27-40).
• "Nedjma." Entry in African Literature and Its Times. (Ed. Joyce Moss. Santa Monica: Moss Publishing, 2000, 289-296).
• "Translation and the Interlingual Text in the Novels of Rachid Boudjedra". In Critical Perspectives on Maghrebian Literature. (Ed. Mildred Mortimer. Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Spring 2000).
• "Fans, Silks, and Ptyx: Mallarmé and Classical Chinese Poetry." Comparative Literature 50.3. (Summer 1998, 220-241).
• "Lacan's Oriental Language of the Unconscious." SubStance #84. (Vol. 26.3, 1997, 90-106).
• "Al-Buhturi's Poetics of Persian Abodes." Journal of Arabic Literature. (Vol. XXVIII, 1997, 68-87).
• "Al-Sharif Al-Taliq, Jacques Lacan, and the Poetics of Abbreviation." Homoeroticism in Classical Arabic Writing. (Ed. J.W. Wright, Jr. & Everett Crowson. Columbia University Press, 1997, 140-157).
• Translation of Abu Nuwas' "Drunkenness After Drunkenness." Literatures of Asia, Africa and Latin America. From Antiquity to the Present. (Ed. Willis Barnstone & Tony Barnstone. Prentice Hall, 1995, 1010-1011).

Graduate Courses:

• French and Francophone Poetry
• Genre and the Algerian War
• Francophone Literature and the Imperative of History
• Postcolonial Writer/Postmodern Condition

Undergraduate Courses:

• North African Literature in French
• Modern Poetry
• Introduction to Francophone Poetry
• Multiple Cultures of the Maghreb
• Introduction to World Literature
• Fin-de-siècle France and the Far East
• Introduction à la poésie francophone
• Remembering and Queer Literature
• Lyric Poetry in Comparative Context
• Aspects of French Literature
• Advanced Grammar and Composition
• Représentations de la famille dans la littérature maghrébine d'expression française

Program Connections:

Center for African Studies
Comparative Literature
Middle Eastern Studies