Office: Denison 295
Office Hours: By appointment
Karim Mattar is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He completed his D.Phil. in English at the University of Oxford in 2013. He works on world literature in the context of global capitalist modernity, and his research and teaching interests include the history of the novel, comparative Middle Eastern literatures and cultures, and critical theory. He has recently completed two books, a monograph entitled Specters of World Literature: Orientalism, Modernity, and the Novel in the Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming 2020) and a co-edited volume entitled The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2019; ed. with Anna Ball). Current and future research projects include books on “The Ethics of Affiliation: Literature and the Trauma of History in Israel / Palestine” and “Literatures of Global Crisis”. He is fluent in Arabic, and has a working competency in French, German, Turkish, and Persian.
Karim’s articles have appeared in Interventions, the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Translation and Literature, English Language Notes, boundary 2, and elsewhere. He has edited or co-edited two journal special issues, on “The Global Checkpoint” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2014; ed. with David Fieni) and “Cartographies of Dissent” (English Language Notes, 2014). In 2012, he co-convened the first ever “Oxford Palestine Film Season” with Anna Ball and Mohamed-Salah Omri. He is on the editorial board of English Language Notes and is currently serving as Chair of the MLA Global Arab and Arab American Forum executive committee.
In addition to his doctorate, Karim holds degrees from UCL (B.A. Philosophy, 2003); Warwick (M.A. Philosophy and Literature, 2004); Sussex (M.A. English / Critical Theory, 2005); and Virginia (M.A. English, 2009).