Amira El-Zein

Amira El-Zein is Associate Professor of Arabic at Georgetown University in Qatar. She specializes in Arabic and French literature, comparative literature, literary criticism, translation, and religion and ecology.   

Professor El-Zein is the author of Is This Devastation for Me Alone? (Arab Institute For Research & Publishing, 2018), Creativity and the Sacred (Arab Institute for Research and Publishing, 2016) Islam, Arabs, and the Intelligent World of the Jinn (Syracuse University Press, 2009), The Jinn and Other Poems (Arrowsmith Press, 2006), The Bedouins of Hell (Kitab Publishers, 2002), and The Book of Palm Trees (Arab Institute for Research and Publishing,1990). She is also the author of more than a dozen articles published in peer-reviewed journals such as Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics and Conaissance des Religions, and several book chapters on various topics, including Sufism in medieval and contemporary Islam, Francophone literature, Arabian nights, and contemporary Arabic poetry and fiction. Professor El-Zein is the co-editor of Culture, Creativity and Exile (Jusoor, 2003). She is also a translator in Arabic, French, and English, and has translated a range of works, including, most recently, Palestine as Metaphor: Translation from French (Olive Branch Press, 2019) with Carolyn Forche.  

Professor El-Zein’s work has been featured on Voice of America, NPR, PBS, and several Arab language news networks, including Al Jazeera. El-Zein has taught a wide range of courses in Arabic, French, and English at Tufts University and Georgetown University at both the Washington, DC, and Doha campuses. 

Professor El-Zein received her Ph.D. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University.