Selim, Samah

  • Samah Selim
  • Samah Selim
  • Professor of Modern Arabic Literature
  • Phone: 848-445-8456
  • Office hours: By Appointment
  • Room #: 6161
  • Office address: 15 Seminary Place, College Avenue Campus
  • Education:

    PhD: Department of Middle Eastern and Asian Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, 1997.

    BA: Department of English, Barnard College, 1986.
  • Areas of Research/Interest:

    Professor Selim’s research fields are in modern Arabic literature and literary/intellectual history, and translation studies. She is interested in comparative histories of the novel, and the politics of translation practice in colonial and postcolonial contexts. 

    She is also an award-winning literary translator. She is the recipient of the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation (2009), the University of Arkansas Translation of Arabic Literature Award (2012) and the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant (2018).

    Her most recent book, Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nadha in Egypt explores the cultural and literary politics surrounding the translation of the novel into Arabic at the beginning of the twentieth century. She is currently working on a book about the early twentieth century Lebanese author Niqula Haddad (1878-1954), and a translation of the collected works of Egyptian feminist and Surrealist painter Inji Aflatoun (1924-1989).

    Professor Selim has taught at Columbia University, Princeton University, the University of Aix-en-Provence and the American University in Cairo. She co-directs the literature module of the Berlin-based postdoctoral research program, Europe in the Middle East; the Middle East in Europe. She is a founding member of the Cairo-based Turjoman Translators Collective and a member of the Executive Committee of the Rutgers Translation Studies Initiative.

  • SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

     Books:

    -Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nahda in Egypt. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

    -The Novel and the Rural Imaginary in Egypt, 1880-1985. Routledge, 2004.

    Book chapters:

    -“Fantastic Revolution: Translation and Critique in the City of the Future.” in Cities and Fantasy: Urban Imaginaries across Cultures 1830-1930. Eds. Klaudia Hiu Yen Lee & Sharin Schroeder, Liverpool University Press, Forthcoming, November, 2025.

    -“Translations and Adaptations from the European Novel.” The Oxford Handbook of Arab Novelistic Traditions. Ed. Wail S. Hassan, Oxford University Press, 2017, pp. 119-134.

    -“Text and Context: Translating in a State of Emergency.” Translating Dissent: Voices from within and with the Egyptian Revolution. Ed. Mona Baker, Routledge, 2015, pp.77-87.

    Translations:

    -Arwa Salih, The Stillborn: Notebooks of a woman from the student movement generation in Egypt. Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2018.

    -Jurji Zaydan. Tree of Pearls, Queen of Egypt. New York: Syracuse University Press, 2012.

    -Khalid Ziadeh. Neighborhood and Boulevard: Reading through the Modern Arab City. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

    -Yahya Taher Abdullah. The Collar and the Bracelet. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008.

    Articles:

    -“Feminist poetics/feminist reading: Ghālib Halasa's al-Khamāsīn.” Middle Eastern Literatures, Eds. Amir Moosavi & Anne-Marie MacManus. Forthcoming, December 2025.

    -“Politics and Paratext: On Translating Arwa Salih’s Al-Mubtasarun.” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 38, 2018, pp.180-202.

    -“Fiction and Colonial Identities: Arsène Lupin in Arabic.” Middle Eastern Literatures, vol. 13, no. 2, 2010, pp.191-210.

     
  • Courses:
    • 01:013:120 Literary Egypt 
    • 01:013:206 Banned Books 
    • 01:013:221 Introduction to the Literatures of the Middle East 
    • 01:013:342 Modern Arabic Literature 
    • 01:013:450 Storytelling in the Muslim World