Following a BA in Spanish and Arabic at St John's College, Oxford, I completed a funded MA in Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where I was a Massey College Junior Fellow. In 2024, I completed a DPhil in Medieval and Modern Languages, funded by a Wolfson Foundation Postgraduate Scholarship in the Humanities, under the supervision of Professors Ben Bollig and Mohamed-Salah Omri. I currently teach Arabic, Latin American, and Comparative Literatures across the University.
Research
My DPhil project takes as its corpus of study a selection of Arabic- and Spanish-language Arab diasporic texts authored and published by mahjar (émigré) poets as well as second-generation immigrant poets in Latin America between 1920 and 1970. Scholars have been prone to identifying and disparaging a 'conservative', 'traditional' tendency in southern (or Latin American) mahjar poetry, conflating political, cultural, and literary conservatisms, and tradition with traditionalism. This common reading or (as shall be argued) misrepresentation of southern mahjar poetry has discouraged scholarship on the subject and on the multigenerational and multilingual corpus of Latin American Arab poetry more broadly. The notion that this poetry of South-South migration lacks innovation and literary or cultural importance seems to stem more from Western development frameworks and paternalism towards the Global South than any critical engagement with the poetry itself. The importance and specificity of Latin American Arab poetry, as well as the subjective agency of its creators, have historically been obscured by its position within an uneven global literary and cultural landscape. Through foregrounding writerly agency and choice, and tradition as process, I aim to elucidate the creative and political power produced and exercised by twentieth-century Latin American Arab poets over form and tradition.
Teaching
Undergraduate dissertation supervision (Spanish), Jesus College, Hilary Term 2025
'Translingual and Multilingual Texts' and 'Migration, Travel, and Encounter: Minding Borders', Comparative Literature and Critical Translation MSt lectures and seminars, Humanities Division, Hilary Term 2025
Modern Arabic Literature lectures, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Michaelmas Term 2024-Hilary Term 2025
College Lecturer in Arabic Language and Literature (Modern Arabic Literature), St John's College, Michaelmas Term 2023 and Michaelmas Term 2024
'Watching (Latin American) Film' and 'Close-Reading a Poem (in Spanish)' Taster Sessions, Modern Languages Study Day 2022, St John's College, Oxford, UK, March 9th 2022
Graduate Teaching Assistant in Spanish, Lincoln College, 2021-2022
FHS Spanish Paper VIII Tutor, The Literature of Spain & Spanish America: 1811 to the Present, Michaelmas Term 2021-Hilary Term 2022
'Literary Indigenismo in the Andes and Beyond', lecture, Hilary Term 2021 and Hilary Term 2022
Tutor in English Literature, Visiting Student Programme, St Catherine's College, Michaelmas Term 2021
Como agua para chocolate Spanish A-Level Close Reading Workshop, Modern Languages Literature Masterclass, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Oxford, UK, January 14th 2020
Publications
'A Thousand and One Laylas: The Politics of Narrative Embedding in Laila Neffa's Ais', Amerika [Online], 27 (March 2024) https://doi.org/10.4000/amerika.18922
Conference and Seminar Presentations
'Omar Estrella and the Proletarianizing Aesthetics of Indigenismo in the Andean Avant-Garde', Northeast Modern Language Association's 54th Annual Convention, Niagara Falls, NY, US, March 24th 2023
'Las mil y una Lailas: la política del encuadramiento narrativo en Ais de Laila Neffa', Seminario internacional: Viajeros reales e imaginarios latinoamericanos por Argelia y el mundo árabe (siglos XIX y XX), University of Abdelhamid Ibn Badis-Mostaganem, Algeria[/Online], March 8th 2022
'Omar Estrella's Superficial Revolutions: Indigeneity and Modernismo in the Andean Avant-Garde', American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) Annual Meeting [Online], April 11th 2021
'Tradition as Process in Twentieth-Century Latin American Arab Poetry', Oxford Spanish Research Seminar [Online], February 9th 2021
'A Thousand and One Laylas: The Politics of Narrative Embedding in Laila Neffa's Ais', British Comparative Literature Association Postgraduate Conference, Oxford, UK, March 6th 2020