Faculty and Staff

Office Hours: Tuesdays  1:30 – 3:00 pm, Fridays 1:15 – 2:15, and by appointment.

B.A. UC Santa Cruz; M.A. Princeton University; Ph.D. candidate University of Pennsylvania.

I bring to my learning and teaching of Arabic the filial love inherent to ibn al-lugha (child of the language), but also the appreciation of the difficulty of learning this language as a young adult. My father is Lebanese and my mother American, and I was born in Beirut. Technically, Arabic was my first language. As a very young child in Beirut, the first syllables I uttered were in spoken Arabic, but after my family left Lebanon our home language switched entirely to English. Arabic was a continued, spectral presence–the names of foods we often ate, a couple of less-than-polite expressions–but I lost all ability to communicate in Arabic. However I became drawn to the field of literature, and some Arabic novels in translation that I read convinced me that I needed to commit myself to learning the language after graduation from UC Santa Cruz. That commitment took me first to night classes at a community college, and then to Beirut, before studying at Princeton University, the American University of Cairo, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Here at Carleton I teach courses in Arabic language, both formal and colloquial, and courses on Arabic literature. I love teaching this language, and helping to guide a deeply committed and close-knit community of language learners to master something so seemingly distant from their experiences and life histories. The language learning path that I took informs my teaching, and helps remind me (and the students), that this is something doable. Not only that, but the riches of both the Arabic language and Arab cultures are well worth the effort.

Winter Office Hours: Wednesdays 1:00 – 2:00 PM, Fridays 2:00 – 3:00 PM, and by appointment.

B.A., Tel Aviv University; M.A., Ph.D. Harvard University

I teach Arabic language at all levels, along with courses on Premodern Arabic literature and contemporary Arab music. My research explores the intersections of literature and music, with publications on the discourse on music in Islamic and philosophical thought—including the works of al-Fārābī and al-Ghazālī—as well as studies of ʿAbbāsid poetry.

I also teach oud (the Arab lute), and perform Middle Eastern music with the Minneapolis-based Amwaaj ensemble (see my profile on Carleton’s Music Department page).