Announcing the 2026-27 CMES Faculty Steering Committee Members
Muhanna is a scholar of medieval and early-modern Islamic history and classical Arabic literature. His research has focused on encyclopedic practices in the Arabic-Islamic world, the history of the Arabic language and the problem of the vernacular in various literary traditions. His books include "The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition" (Princeton University Press, 2018); "The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition" (Penguin Classics, 2016); "The Book of Travels" (NYU Press, 2021), and two edited volumes. His essays and criticism appear regularly in The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, The New York Times and other periodicals.
Al-Ali's research addresses feminist activism and gendered mobilization in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey and the Kurdish movement. Her books include "Iraqi Women: Untold Stories, Secularism, Gender and the State in the Middle East", and the co-edited "Resisting Far-Right Politics in the Middle East and Europe: Queer Feminist Critiques".
Faiza is a Tunisian poet, literary translator and an associate teaching professor of Arabic. He is the author of two poetry collections and has translated works by Ali Smith, Shukri Mabkhout, Amira Ghenim, and Lamia Makaddam. His poetry has appeared in World Literature Today, Banipal, and other international journals.
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Nahme is a scholar of modern Jewish thought and intellectual history. His work engages political theory, psychoanalysis and critical theory to examine religion, race and nationalism. He is the author of “Hermann Cohen and the Crisis of Liberalism” and “Ghost People” as well as co-editor of the essay collection “Covenantal Thinking: Essays on the Philosophy and Theology of David Novak.
Pabón teaches courses on comparative poetics, Arabic literature and anticolonial thought. Her book-in-progress, “Third-Worldist Poetics: Palestine, Cuba, Algeria,” lays out the political and cultural landscape in which Palestine, Cuba, and Algeria became linked topoi of revolution, as well as connected literary communities, from the 1950s to the 1970s. She is the co-editor of the volume “Art and Politics Between the Arab World and Latin America.” Her academic writing has appeared in Comparative Literature Studies, Middle Eastern Literatures and Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research.
Quay’s research focuses on premodern Persian literature, particularly in the writings of Farid al-Din ‘Attar Nishapuri and other early Sufi mystics. Through her teaching, she enjoys helping students acquire the basics of Persian language and guiding them through the program to advanced Persian language, literature and culture courses.
Rojas Silva works at the intersection of classical archaeology, art history, and anthropology. In much of his research, he has tackled questions regarding how people have used artifacts they recognize as old to explain or celebrate their own pasts, especially in Anatolia. He is currently writing a book about ancient dance.
