Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi (Columbia University)

Muhsin Jassim al-Musawi writes on Arabic fiction, poetry, culture, and politics and has published twenty-four books (including four novels) and over sixty scholarly articles. His most recent books include The Society of One Thousand and One Nights (2000), The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (2003), Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (2006), Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict (2006), The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights (2009), and Islam on the Street: Religion in Modern Arabic Literature (2009). He is at work on a book entitled Revolution in Arabic: Literature at War.

Valérie Orlando (University of Maryland)

Valérie Orlando writes on francophone women’s writing, exile, and cinema of the Maghreb. She is the author of Nomadic Voices of Exile: Feminine Identity in Francophone Literature of the Maghreb (1999); Of Suffocated Hearts and Tortured Souls: Seeking Subjecthood Through Madness in Francophone Women’s Writing of Africa and the Caribbean (2003); Francophone Voices of the ‘New Morocco’ in Film and Print: (Re)presenting a Society in Transition (2009) and Screening Morocco: Filmic Depictions of a Changing Society (2011).

Khalil Bendib (Berkeley, CA)

An Algerian and American based in Berkeley, CA, he is a widely-known political cartoonist whose cartoons range widely over issues including democracy, race, American politics, North Africa and the Middle East, immigration, environmental degradation, labor, and class. His cartoons are distributed to over 1700 newspapers across North America and are regularly featured in many small magazines and web sites worldwide. His collection, Mission Accomplished: Wicked Cartoons By America’s Most Wanted Political Cartoonist, appeared in 2007, and he runs the web site www.bendib.com.

The conference will include a roundtable of University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate students and faculty composed of the following speakers: Névine El Nossery (French and Italian), Hala Ghoneim (African Languages and Literature), Ammar Naji (English), Duaa Salemeh (English), and Mary Youssef (African Languages and Literature).