Dr. Maya Aghasi | American University of Sharjah
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Profile

College / Department

College of Arts and Sciences
Department of English

Teaching areas

world literature, postcolonial literatures, comics, writing composition, public speaking, film, literary theory, gender, culture.

Research areas

modern Arabic literature, film studies, gender, discard studies, pedagogy

Education

PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin- Madison, United States, 2012
MA, Comparative Literature, University of Wisconsin- Madison, United States, 2007
BA, English Literature, Lebanese American University, Lebanon, 2004

Professional experience

Andrew W. Mellon Sawyer Seminar Dissertation Fellow, Canter For Research On Gender And Women, UW-Madison, 2011 - 2012

Memberships

American Comparative Literature Association, ACLA, International
British Society for Middle Eastern Studies, BRISMES, International
Middle East Studies Association, MESA, International

Contact

[email protected]
+971 6 515 2588

Dr. Maya Aghasi

Associate Professor
PhD, University of Wisconsin- Madison, United States

Maya Aghasi's research focuses on literary and cultural texts emerging from contexts of conflict, political crisis, and cross-cultural encounters/confrontations. She focuses on modern Arabic Literature and film, world literatures, and Arab America. She has a variety of teaching experience from the US, Lebanon, and the UAE, and has taught courses ranging from introductory composition, literary theory, and master's level seminars. Her most recent work focuses on waste, and she is working on a book tentatively titled, Trashscapes of the Modern Middle East.

Publications

Maya Aghasi. Garbage, corruption, and political protest in Lebanese literature and film, Middle Eastern Literatures, 2 January (1st Quarter/Winter) 2023
Maya Aghasi. “Pour dire la souffrance des innocents?” Problematics of the Madonna-Son Trope in Representing Trauma in Philippe Aractingi’s Under the Bombs and Nadine Labaki’s Capernaum, 12 December 2021
Maya Aghasi. World Literature in the World?, Journal Of World Literature, 4 October (4th Quarter/Autumn) 2021
Maya Aghasi. Remembering Genocide: The Sacred Madonna and Narrative Closure in Atom Egoyan’s Ararat, Canadian Journal Of Film Studies, 24 September 2021
Maya Aghasi. Arts: Fiction and Fiction Writers: United States, Encyclopedia Of Women And Islamic Cultures Online, 1 December 2016
Maya Aghasi. "Pedagogy of an execution: National identity as a gendered structure of vision in Etel Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose.", In _identity And Conflict In The Middle East And Its Diasporic Cultures_, Edited By Mazen Naous., September 2016

Conference Presentations

Trees, Landfills, and Garbage Collectors: The Destruction of the Category of the Idyllic in Costa Brava, Lebanon and Hanging Gardens, Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, November 2026
War and Waste: A Satire of Progress, Ideology, and Postcolonial Self-Determination, British Society For Middle Eastern Studies Annual Conference, June 2026
Itineraries of Matter: Modernity, Progress, and the Question of Waste, Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting, 4 November 2025

Grants and sponsorships

Grant, AMICAL Cohort to Digital Humanities Institute- Beirut, AMICAL, May 2019

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