Maya Kesrouany
Assistant Professor of Literature and Arab Crossroads Studies
Affiliation: NYU Abu Dhabi
Education: BA American University of Beirut; MA American University of Beirut; PhD Emory University
Research Areas: twentieth- and twenty-first century cultural production from the Middle East; translation theory; aesthetics and politics; visual culture
Maya Kesrouany is an Assistant Professor of Modern Arabic Literature at NYUAD. Her recent scholarship centers on twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural production from the Middle East, with a specific interest in the relationship between aesthetics and politics in literary and visual arts and the theory, practice, and impact of translation on 20th century Arab cultural thought.
Over the course of her academic career, Kesrouany has taught courses in Arabic and postcolonial literature, modern British literature and culture, the novel, literary theory in a comparative framework, and Middle Eastern studies. At NYU Abu Dhabi, Kesrouany will be teaching courses such as “Introduction to Modern Arabic Literature.”
Kesrouany’s book entitled Prophetic Translation: The Promise of European Literature in the Egyptian Imaginary was published by Edinburgh University Press in January 2019. The book explores translations of French and British literature and philosophy into Arabic around the turn of the 20th century and their impact on modern Arabic narrative and thought. Other publications deal more specifically with the translation and teaching of Arabic literature, the history of criticism, and the role of the public intellectual in the Arab world today. Her current research project – Conversions with No Endings: Aesthetics and Politics in the Arab World – explores visual and literary cultural transformations in Egypt and Lebanon from the 1940s until today.