Occupation
Graduate Student (Doctoral)
Contact
540 Seminary Row
31B
New York
NY
10027
United States
ABOUT
Aya is a Ph.D. candidate in the English and Comparative Literature Department and affiliated with the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society. She works on imperial conspiracies and local conspiracy cultures in postcolonial Middle Eastern literature and media. Her work approaches these phenomena from a variety of angles: as heretical discourses, popular critiques, epistemic injuries, and modern enchantments.
Aya currently serves as an instructor of record for writing composition at Columbia University, a Lead Teaching Fellow with Columbia's Center for Teaching and Learning, and an Assistant Editor at the Journal of Arabic Literature. She is also affiliated with several Public Humanities community projects, serving as a curatorial Fellow with the ZIP Code Memory Project and a collaborator on the "Speaking of Queer Spirituality" Harlem podcasting project. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in the MOSF Journal of Science Fiction, Politics/Letters quarterly, Culturico, Ancient Exchanges, and Aeon magazine.
Discipline
Literature
Sub Areas
Arab Studies
Colonialism
Comparative
Queer/LGBT Studies
Middle East/Near East Studies
Nationalism
Modernization
Minorities
Geographic Areas of Interest
All Middle East
The Levant
Egypt
Arab States
Specialties
Conspiracy Theories
Imperial Conspiracies
Postcolonial Studies
Languages
Arabic (native)
English (native)
French (intermediate)
Education
MPhil
| 2021
| English & Comparative Literature
| Columbia University
MA
| 2019
| English & Comparative Literature
| Columbia University
BA
| 2018
| Comparative Literature
| University of California Irvine
BA
| 2018
| Philosophy
| University of California Irvine
BA
| 2018
| French Language & Literature
| University of California Irvine
Abstracts
They Know Our Streets: Minorities as “Conspirators” at the Nexus of Imperial & National Interests
Treachery and Translation: The Allegiances of Hebrew in Emile Habibi’s Palestine and al-Tahir Wattar’s Algeria
