{"id":3758,"date":"2013-10-09T20:53:32","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T00:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/?post_type=profile&p=3758"},"modified":"2026-01-13T16:11:59","modified_gmt":"2026-01-13T21:11:59","slug":"margaret-litvin","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/margaret-litvin\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Litvin"},"content":{"rendered":"

On research leave spring 2026 (Henderson Senior Fellowship, BU Center for the Humanities). Office hours by appointment.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Margaret Litvin is Associate Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature. Her research explores modern Arabic literature\u2019s global entanglements, from adaptations of Shakespeare\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>Hamlet\u00a0<\/span><\/i>to the literary legacies of Arab-Russian and Arab-Soviet ties. She is the author of two solo-authored books, <\/span>Hamlet\u2019s Arab Journey: Shakespeare\u2019s Prince and Nasser\u2019s Ghost<\/i>\u00a0<\/a>(Princeton, 2011) and\u00a0<\/span>Red Mecca: The Life and Afterlives of the Arab-Soviet Romance\u00a0<\/span><\/i>(Princeton, forthcoming). Her collaborative projects include the anthology\u00a0Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History<\/span><\/a>,\u00a0<\/span><\/i>co-edited with historians Eileen Kane and Masha Kirasirova, and the\u00a0memoir of Soviet-educated Palestinian communist Najati Sidqi<\/span><\/a>, co-translated with two then-BU undergraduates. Other publications analyze the Cold War struggle over Tolstoy, the \u201cintimate foreign relations\u201d of Soviet student dormitories, the theatre of the Arab \u201cspring,\u201d and the vagaries of Arabic plays for non-Arabic-speaking audiences. She has translated Sonallah Ibrahim\u2019s novel\u00a0<\/span>Ice<\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/i>and several Arabic\u00a0<\/span>plays<\/a>. Her current project, a translation of the 2019 novel\u00a0al-Hayy al-Rusi\u00a0<\/i>(The Russian Quarter) by exiled Syrian novelist Khalil Alrez, is supported by a 2023 PEN\/Heim Translation Grant and by the BU Center on Forced Displacement; its tentative English title is\u00a0<\/span>The Sleepless Giraffe of Damascus.\u00a0<\/span><\/i>Future projects include a collective biography of Najati and Lotka Sidqi titled\u00a0<\/span>A Daughter Named Internationale: The True Story of an Impossible Palestinian Family.<\/i><\/p>\n

At BU, Litvin teaches \u201cWar in Arabic Literature & Film<\/a>,\u201d \u201cGlobal Shakespeares,\u201d \u201c1001 Nights in the World Literary Imagination,\u201d \u201cArabic Translation & Interpreting,\u201d and the bilingual course \u201cIntro to Arabic Literature.\u201d She also teaches in the Core social science sequence and in the MFA in Literary Translation program. She founded BU\u2019s interdisciplinary major in Middle East and North Africa Studies in 2014 and has advised the Arabic minor since 2009. She welcomes prospective student inquiries about the BU MFA in Literary Translation, the Arabic minor, and potential undergraduate research projects in Arabic.<\/p>\n

Some public-facing essays:<\/b><\/p>\n