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Headshot of Tahia Abdel Nasser, Associate Professor and Chair, Department of English and Comparative Literature

Tahia Abdel Nasser

  • Position: Associate Professor and Chair of English and Comparative Literature
  • Department: Department of English and Comparative Literature
  • Email: [email protected]
Brief Biography

Tahia Abdel Nasser is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at The American University in Cairo (AUC). She is the author of Latin American and Arab Literature: Transcontinental Exchanges (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) and Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and the editor of Nasser My Husband (American University in Cairo Press, 2013). She is currently working on a book manuscript on literary and cultural ties between Latin America and Palestine. Her articles and translations have appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, Yearbook of Comparative Literature, Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Arabic Literature, Mahmoud Darwish: The Adam of Two Edens (Syracuse UP, 2001), and The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology (Interlink Books, 2001). Her fiction has appeared in New World Writing, Rigorous, Oyster River Pages, and elsewhere.

Her research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, the global South, Arabic and Latin American literature, and European literature. She holds a PhD in English Language and Literature from Cairo University (2007), an MA (1999) and a BA (summa cum laude, 1996) in English and Comparative Literature from the American University in Cairo. She teaches contemporary literature, Third World literature, global Anglophone literature, and Arab and Latin American literature.

She was awarded an Erasmus Mundus Fellowship at the Institute for Latin American Studies of Freie Universität Berlin and was a visiting scholar in 2014 and 2017.  At AUC, she was the chair of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature (2012–2018). She has served on the Forum on Arabic Literature and Culture at the Modern Language Association (MLA) (2015–2019).

Research Interest
  • Comparative Literature
  • 20th and 21st Century Literature
  • Arabic and Latin American Literature
  • The Global South

Books

Latin American and Arab Literature: Transcontinental Exchanges. Edinburgh University Press, 2022.

Literary Autobiography and Arab National Struggles. Edinburgh University Press, 2017. Paperback 2019.

Abdel Nasser, Tahia Gamal. Nasser My Husband. Translated by Shereen Mosaad, edited by Tahia Abdel Nasser, The American University in Cairo Press, 2013.

Articles and Book Chapters

“Translation and North African Letters.” A Companion to African Literatures, edited by Olakunle George, Wiley-Blackwell, 2021, pp. 151–164. 

“Latin America and North Africa: Latin American Iconography in Arabic Literature.” América Latina - Africa del Norte – España: lazos culturales, intelectuales y literarios del colonialismo español al antiimperialismo tercermundista, edited by Stephanie Fleischmann and Ana Nenadovic, Iberoamericana Vervuert, 2020, pp. 221–232.

 “Translations of Nasser between the Public and the Private.” In the Shoes of the Other: Interdisciplinary Essays in Translation Studies from Cairo, edited by Samia Mehrez, Kotob Khan, 2019, pp. 65–74.

 “The Mirrors of Palestine.” Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniyah, vol. 119, 2019, pp. 82–86.

 “Palestine and Latin America: Lina Meruane’s Volverse Palestina and Nathalie Handal’s La Estrella Invisible.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 54, no. 2, 2018, pp. 239–253.

“Between Latin America and the Arab World: Rodrigo Rey Rosa and Alberto Ruy-Sánchez in Morocco.” Re-Mapping World Literature: Writing, Book Markets, and Epistemologies between Latin America and the Global South, edited by Gesine Müller, Benjamin Loy, and Jorge Locane, De Gruyter, 2018, pp. 45–60. 

 “Anglophone Arab Autobiography and the Postcolonial Middle East: Najla Said and Hisham Matar.” The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East, edited by Karim Mattar and Anna Ball, Edinburgh University Press, 2018, pp. 349–361.

“Arab and Latin American Literature: Mourid Barghouti, Najla Said, and Lina Meruane in Palestine.” Commonwealth Essays and Studies, vol. 40, no. 1, 2017, pp. 63–76.

 “Revolution and Cien años de soledad in Naguib Mahfouz’s Layālī alf laylah.”  Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 52, no. 3, 2015, pp. 91–113.

“Revolutionary Poetics and Translation.” Translating Dissent: Voices from and with the Egyptian Revolution, edited by Mona Baker, Routledge, 2015, pp. 107–122.

 “Between Exile and Elegy, Palestine and Egypt: Mourid Barghouti’s Poetry and Memoirs.”  Journal of Arabic Literature, vol. 45, 2014, pp. 244–264.

“The Arabic Archive of Magic Realism.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, vol. 31, 2011, pp. 184–215.

“African Autobiography: The Contribution of Women.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, vol. 22, 2002, pp. 58–75.      

“Language and Identity in Yasmine Zahran’s A Beggar at Damascus Gate.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, vol. 20, 2000, pp. 103–116.