Lev Nussimbaum situated the eponymous hero and heroine of his 1937 novel, Ali and Nino, at linguistic, geographic, national, religious, and cultural crossroads in early-nineteenth century Azerbaijan and North-Eastern Persia. In an attempt to understand themselves, each other, and their intersecting positions, Ali and Nino must respond to and assess their constantly shifting and opposing environments. One’s understanding of the characters becomes more entangled still upon realization that their story was penned in German by a Jewish Azeri and convert to Islam, under the pseudonym of Kurban Said, who himself fled Baku in 1917. Such complexity defies attempts to settle on a definitive interpretation while demanding exchange as a prerequisite to deeper understanding: exchange between the text, its readers, and a wide range of other sources. This insistence makes Ali and Nino an ideal text for the twenty-first century classroom, the demographic of which has been radically reconstituted by migration and globalization. This talk is part of a larger project, conducted in partnership with our department’s Associate Professor of German Studies, Lisabeth Hock, that interrogates the intersections of gender, ethnicity and religion in Ali and Nino, and outlines teaching strategies that help students 1) explore identity formations as articulated in the novel, and 2) engage with a broad range of source material and interpretive communities. Here, I will focus on the teaching opportunities presented by the opposing and intersecting identities of Ali, an Azerbaijani Muslim, and Nino, a Georgian Christian. Although on the surface they no doubt satisfy typical Orientalist characteristics, this paper will explore the ways in which these characters push the boundaries of their literary status quo as they navigate through intersections of religions, cultures, and geographies to assert agency. While intersectionality remains a necessary component of colonial literary studies, after the publication of Orientalism, the Orientalist imaginary and discourse in “western” literature of the colonized has become an exceptionally common frame of reference. A close reading of Ali and Nino, however, can be used to demonstrate the limitations inherent in frames of reference and suggest strategies for moving beyond those boundaries. Combining our different linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary backgrounds we have articulated activities that encourage students to engage with--and interrogate the authority of—varied information sources: themselves, their communities, communities different from their own, and scholarly sources from Gender Studies, Near East studies and German studies.