Nusaiba I
- Research Program Mentor

PhD candidate at University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

Expertise

Middle Eastern Studies, Arabic Literature, LGBTQ Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Creative Writing: Poetry, Popular Literature, Fandom Studies

Bio

I'm a writer and doctoral candidate at the University of Minnesota. I grew up in Damascus, Syria, and moved to Minnesota in 2013. My dissertation focuses on the nuanced expressions of desire, love, and the complexities of joy and madness in Modern Arabic Literature. I also research romance novels, fan fiction, and queer narratives of joy. I spend my free time playing roller derby (badly), learning how to draw (badly), and attempting to play a Blood Hunter in my current Dungeons and Dragons campaign (a bit less badly).

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Reading Here and Writing There in Your Language: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar in Translation

Analysis of the translation of the Bell Jar in Arabic and how it moves across contextual barriers to forms of solidarity of insanity in being gendered a woman.

Languages I know

Arabic, ASL, French [reading only]

Teaching experience

I have been a writing tutor for over four years at a number of institutions. I have also been a teaching assistant at St. Catherine University and the University of Minnesota.