Instructors

Instructor Spring 2014: Margaret Litvin

Margaret Litvin is Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature in the Department of Modern Languages and Comparative Literature. Her first book, Hamlet’s Arab Journey: Shakespeare’s Prince and Nasser’s Ghost (Princeton, 2011), examines the many adaptations and appropriations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in postcolonial Egypt, Syria, and Iraq. A followup volume is Five Arab Hamlet Plays, an anthology of  translations under contract with the Martin Segal Theatre Center. Her current research (working title Another East: Arab Writers, Moscow Dreams) explores Arab-Russian and Arab-Soviet cultural ties and travel writings and their impact on Arabic literature. At BU she advises the Middle East and North Africa Studies major as well as the Arabic minor. Other courses she teaches concern Arabic and comparative literature, as well as seminars on “Global Shakespeares” and on the worldwide appropriation of the 1001 Nights. Her blog can be found here.

 

Writing Facilitator Spring 2014: Calvin Olsen

Calvin Olsen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University, where he was a 2011 Robert Pinsky Global Fellow. His poems and translations have appeared in Salamander, Dialogue, New Haven Review, eXchanges, The Loft Anthology: New England Poetry and Art, and others. More information on him can be found here.