American University of Beirut 2004-Present
Positions
Professor of English
Director, Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Alsaud Center for American Studies (CASAR)
Director, The Theater Initiative
Former Chair of English
Courses developed and taught
English 212 (Age of Shakespeare)
English 215 (Modern British and Irish Theater)
English 216 (Modern American Theater)
English 225 (Modern American Fiction)
English 236 (Introduction to Creative Writing)
English 239 (Screenwriting)
English 244 (Theater Production: The Cats of Renèe Dick)
English 244/FAAH 283 (Theater Production: Rituals of Signs and Transformations)
English 244/FAAH 283 (Theater Production: The Rape)
English 244/FAAH 283 (Theater Production: al-Malik Lear)
English 244/FAAH 283 (Theater Production: ‘Arras al-Damm)
English 251 (Playwriting)
CVSP 212 (Modern and Contemporary World Theater)
AMST 215 (Introduction to American Studies)
Graduate Seminars
English 309B (Latin American Modernities)
English 304 (The Making of Modern American Drama)
English 306M (Literature and Science)
English 325 (Historical Theater)
English 325 (The Making of Modern European Drama)
Theses
Ukraine and Lebanon Reimagined: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Works of Taras Schevchenko and Mikhail Naimy, 2018
The Novel as Product and Shaper of Cultures: A Cultural, Historical, and Literary Reading of Doctor Zhivago, Explosion in a Cathedral and Palace Walk, 2017
Büchner in the Arab World, 2015
Aesthetics of Play: Narrative Experience in Video Games and Documentary Theater, 2015
Asking and Telling: Tracing the Documentary Impulse to a Tradition of Contemporary Plays, 2011
Play’s The Thing: Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, 2009
The Myth of the Good War: Unregenerative Violence in Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead, Heller’s Catch 22 and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, 2007
Talking Clues: Language and Text-Play in Three Contemporary Detective Novels, 2006
Anaïs Nin, Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence: A Bloomian Family Romance, 2006
Special Projects
“Latin America, al-Andalus and the Arab World.” 2018. Organizer of conference that included presentations by Luce López Baralt, Christina Civantos, Marvin Carlson, Jean Graham-Jones, Michel Sleiman, Emilio Gonzalez-Ferrín and others on theater, literature, language, history, culture and linguistics. (The conference opened with a site-specific, promenade production of Blood Wedding, by García Lorca, in Arabic, in the Lebanese village of Hammana). Edited volume of selected essays based on the conference forthcoming from AUB Press.
“Darwin, AUB and the Arab World” (Organizer of International Conference for AUB’s 150th Anniversary), 2017
“On Wannous,” (Co-organizer of International Symposium on Syrian Playwright Sa’dallah Wannous), 2016
“Converging Creativities: Science in Dialogue with the Arts and Sciences at AUB,” (Organizer of seven panels and events), 2013-2017
Creator and Co-Director of the Theater Initiative at AUB, a plan supported by AUB’s
President to make theater an integral part of university life, 2016
Creator and Co-teacher of four theater courses/workshops that led to professional productions with some the Arab world’s most accomplished theater artists, 2007-2017
Creator, Director, Performer. Organized and participated in over ten play readings, 2004-2017
University Service
Presidential Task Force on Women, 2018-
Task Force on the New Core Curriculum, 2018-
Research Committee, 2016-2017
Member, Executive Committee, 2015
Member, Committee on Interdisciplinary Programs, 2014-2015
Teaching Excellence Award Nomination, 2014
Director, Center for American Studies, 2014-2015 and 2009-2011
Chair, Department of English, 2009
Member, Arts and Humanities Initiative, Advisory Group, 2011-2015
Member, Board of Graduate Studies, 2010-2013
Member, BGS Subcommittee on MA in Human Resources, 2010-2011
Member, Graduate Studies Committee, 2010-2013
Freshman Advisor, 2009-2011
Member, Creative Writing Program, English Department, 2004-2014
Member, Graduate Literature Program, English Department, 2004-2017
Member, Curriculum Committee, English Department, 2013-2015
Chair and member, promotion committees, search committees for positions in literature, language and creative writing, and reader on over a dozen MA theses. English Department, 2005-2017
University of Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Fulbright Fellow, 1999
Position
Professor/Visiting Artist in M.F.A. program
Courses
Modes of Fact-Based Drama in the U.S., Europe and Latin America (M.F.A. Program)
Boal, Kaufman, Anna Deavere Smith, Mann, Buenaventura
Workshop course culminated in staged public performance
Working Title Theatre East Hampton, NY 1998-2001
Position
Director
Courses
The Making of Modern Drama (Chekhov, Ibsen, Brecht, Beckett)
Science and Theatre (Frayn, Brook, Dürrenmatt)
Contemporary Theatre (Churchill, Stoppard, Pinter)
Wesleyan University Middletown, CT 1998
Position
Visiting Professor
Courses
Staging the Real (Performance and Playwriting for Theatre Department) (Mann, Caryl Churchill, Anna Deavere Smith, Moises Kaufman)
Workshop course culminated in staged public performance
Dartmouth College Hanover, NH 1996
Position
Visiting Professor
Courses
Drama 65: Theatre Workshop (With Tim Raphael. Theatre Department)
Sponsored by New York Theatre Workshop
(Wooster Group, Joint Stock, Caryl Churchill)
Course culminated in a production of Heartland, a full-length play
Rutgers University Newark, NJ 1998 and 1994
Position
Adjunct Professor
Courses
Iberian Literary Traditions (Golden Age theatre and poetry, Portuguese literature,
medieval cantigas, Hispano-Arabic lyric and epic poetry)
Yale University New Haven, CT 1990-1991
Position
Instructor
Courses
Introduction to Portuguese (Language instruction, film, music and literature from
Brazil, Portugal and Africa)