research overview
- Karim Mattar is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Colorado at Boulder. A descendant of survivors of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948, he works at the intersection of Palestine studies, the humanities, and higher education. He is currently at work on two book projects. The Ethics of Affiliation seeks to develop a curriculum and a public pedagogy of truth and reconciliation in historic Palestine, focusing on the areas of education, culture, public institutions, civil society, and law. Reflections on Palestine: Exile, Privilege, Responsibility interweaves personal experience, family history, cultural critique, and political analysis to tell a multigenerational, transcontinental story of responsibility to the oppressed. Also a dedicated community organizer, Karim works at the local, state, and national levels to enhance public awareness and understanding of Palestinian literature, history, and politics and to advocate for free speech and academic freedom in the Palestinian case. Karim received his D.Phil. in English at the University of Oxford in 2013, and writes and teaches more broadly on comparative Middle Eastern literatures and cultures, the history of the novel, media and technology, and critical theory. Karim is author of Specters of World Literature: Orientalism, Modernity, and the Novel in the Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and with Anna Ball, co-editor of The Edinburgh Companion to the Postcolonial Middle East (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). In addition to numerous articles, chapters, and reviews in leading publications, Karim has also edited or co-edited the journal special issues “The Global Checkpoint” (Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2014; w. David Fieni), “Cartographies of Dissent” (English Language Notes, 2014), and “Pandemic!: COVID-19 and Literary Studies” (English Language Notes, 2023; w. Jason Gladstone and Nan Goodman).
