Writing from Jabal Akhdar

I am happy to share that I was selected to join the NYUAD Faculty Research Writing Salon, organized by the Humanities Research Fellowship for the Study of the Arab World. The residency took place in Jabal Akhdar, Oman, whose mountain landscapes offered an ideal setting for sustained writing, exchange, and reflection.

During the salon, I worked on a forthcoming article that turns to Algerian literary narratives of emigration from the vantage point of Algeria itself, rather than from Europe. It asks how stories of departure, distance, and return change when Algeria is not treated simply as a place one leaves behind, but as a site of interpretation, memory, and critique. The writing salon provided time to refine the article’s argument, deepen its literary analysis, and think more broadly about the Mediterranean as a shared but uneven space of movement, imagination, and historical fracture. It was also a wonderful opportunity to be in conversation with colleagues working across different fields connected to the study of the Arab world.