Karim Mattar

Affiliated Faculty are not employees of the Center for Asian Studies. Please contact this faculty member at their home department.

Education

D.Phil, English Language and Literature, University of Oxford
M.A., English, University of Virginia
M.A., English Literature/Critical Theory, University of Sussex
M.A. Phil. and Lit., University of Warwick
B.A., Philosophy, University College London

Profile

Karim Mattar is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  A descendant of survivors of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, he works at the intersection of Palestine studies, the humanities, and higher education.  He is currently at work on two book projects.  The Ethics of Affiliation: Palestine and the Future of Humanism seeks to develop a curriculum and a public pedagogy of truth and reconciliation in historic Palestine, focusing on the areas of education, culture, public institutions, civil society, and law.  Writing the Catastrophe: Trauma and Responsibility Across Generations interweaves personal experience, family history, cultural critique, and political analysis to tell a multigenerational, transcontinental story of responsibility to Palestine, with a special emphasis on American higher education during the genocide.  Also a dedicated community organizer, Karim works at the local, state, and national levels to enhance public awareness and understanding of Palestinian literature, history, and politics and to advocate for the liberation of Palestine.  Karim received his D.Phil. in English at the University of Oxford in 2013, and writes and teaches more broadly on comparative Middle Eastern literatures and cultures, the history of the novel, media and technology, and critical theory.

Karim’s first book is Specters of World Literature: Orientalism, Modernity, and the Novel in the Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2020).  This book explores the development of the novel form in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and Saudi Arabia in relation to the demands of modernization in these countries over the last two centuries, and shows how since the 1980s Middle Eastern novelists have been staging imaginative returns to adab as a displaced indigenous cultural tradition in response to the region’s present-day calamities.  Via this analysis, it posits culture rather than politics or religion as the appropriate site for the Middle East’s revival.  With Anna Ball, Karim co-edited The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2019).  Comprised of 25 specially commissioned chapters from leading practitioners in postcolonial studies, Middle East studies, and comparative literature, this volume has since publication become a standard reference work in these fields. In addition to numerous articles, chapters, and reviews in leading publications, Karim has also edited or co-edited the journal special issues “The Global Checkpoint” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2014; w. David Fieni), “Cartographies of Dissent” (English Language Notes, 2014), and “Pandemic!: COVID-19 and Literary Studies” (English Language Notes, 2023; w. Jason Gladstone and Nan Goodman).  In 2012, he co-organized the first ever “Oxford Palestine Film Season” with Anna Ball and Mohamed-Salah Omri.

Karim serves on numerous boards and committees at CU Boulder, the American Association of University Professors, the Coalition for Action in Higher Education, academic journals, and local community organizations.  He is Chair of the CAHE Palestine Caucus.  In 2025, he helped organize the CAHE Day of Action for Higher Education, a major national protest in defense of our sector that featured over 200 events on campuses around the country as well as 14 livestreamed webinars on topics including Palestine, debt, governance, immigration and sanctuary, DEI, and academic freedom.  Additionally, he is a member of the American Comparative Literature Association, the Middle East Studies Association, Al-Shabaka: The Palestinian Policy Network, and United Campus Workers Colorado, and regularly organizes panels and other programming at these fora.  He makes frequent appearances in the Colorado media.

Selected Publications

Monographs

In progress     The Ethics of Affiliation: Palestine and the Future of Humanism 

In progress     Writing the Catastrophe: Trauma and Responsibility Across Generations

2020               Specters of World Literature: Orientalism, Modernity, and the Novel in the Middle East (Edinburgh University Press) (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-specters-of-world-literature.html) Reviews: Critical Inquiry, Journal of Arabic Literature, The Arab Studies Journal, Wasafiri

Edited Collections 

In progress Transnational Arabic Studies, ed. w. Yasser Elhariry (Liverpool University Press) 

In progress Reflections on Palestine: Selected Writings

2023 “Pandemic!: COVID-19 and Literary Studies,” ed. w. Jason Gladstone and Nan Goodman, Special Issue, English Language Notes (61.1) (https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/issue/61/1)

2019 The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East, ed. w. Anna Ball (Edinburgh University Press) (https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-edinburgh-companion-to-thepostcolonial-middle-east.html) Reviews: Commonwealth Essays and Studies, The Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, The Muslim World Book Review

2014 “Cartographies of Dissent,” ed., Special Issue, English Language Notes (52.2) (https://www.colorado.edu/english-language-notes/issues/52-2)

2014 “The Global Checkpoint,” ed. w. David Fieni, Special Issue, Journal of Postcolonial Writing (50.1) (https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjpw20/50/1)

Articles 

Under review “From Tent to Tent: Palestine in the ‘Postcolonial’ Academy,” Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry & Journal of Arabic Literature

2025 “Philosophy’s Ghosts: Nicholas Royle, Naji al-Ali, and Me,” Textual Practice (39.4) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2025.2488221)

2023 “Introduction: Iterations of Friendship and Community,” w. Nan Goodman and Jason Gladstone, English Language Notes (61.1) (https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-languagenotes/article/61/1/1/351988/IntroductionIterations-of-Friendship-and-Community)

2022 “Exile, Privilege, Responsibility: A Palestinian Perspective,” American Literary History (34.3) (https://academic.oup.com/alh/articleabstract/34/3/1058/6671615?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

2021 “Gaza and the Limits of Metropolitan Solidarity: Affiliation Under Duress,” boundary 2 (48.2) (https://read.dukeupress.edu/boundary-2/article-abstract/48/2/205/173250/Gaza-and-theLimits-of-Metropolitan-Solidarity?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

2014 “The Shabaḥ of World Literature: Bedouin Cartographies in Abdulrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt,” English Language Notes (52.2) (https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/article-abstract/52/2/35/136989/TheShaba-of-World-Literature-Bedouin?redirectedFrom=fulltext)

2014 “Introduction: The Cartographic Unconscious of Literary Studies,” English Language Notes (52.2) (https://read.dukeupress.edu/english-language-notes/article/52/2/1/136988/IntroductionThe-Cartographic-Unconscious-of)

2014 “Orhan Pamuk and the Limits of Translation: Foreignizing The Black Book for World Literature,” Translation and Literature (23.1) (https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/tal.2014.0135)

2014 “Out of Time: Colonial History in Ibrahim Nasrallah’s Time of White Horses,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing (50.2) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17449855.2014.883176)

2014 “Mourid Barghouti’s ‘Multiple Displacements’: Exile and the National Checkpoint in Palestinian Literature,” Journal of Postcolonial Writing (50.1) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449855.2013.850253)

2014 “Introduction: Mapping the Global Checkpoint,” w. David Fieni, Journal of Postcolonial Writing (50.1) (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17449855.2013.850209)

2012 “Re-Reading the ‘Rogue State’: The Politics of Gender in Anglophone Iranian Literature,” Interventions:International Journal of Postcolonial Studies (14.4)