Karim Mattar

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.