Hosam Aboul-Ela is a Professor in the Department of English and inaugural holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Burhan and Misako Ajouz Professorship in Arab Studies at the University of Houston. He is the author of two books of literary criticism: “Other South: Faulkner, Coloniality, and the Mariategui Tradition” [University of Pittsburgh 2007] and “Domestications: American Empire, Literary Culture, and the Postcolonial Lens” [Northwestern/Flashpoints 2018]. He has published dozens of academic articles and written for general venues, including npr.com, the Houston Chronicle, the New York Times Magazine, and Jadaliyya.com. He is the translator of four Arabic novels into English, most recently Sonallah Ibrahim’s “Warda” [Yale 2021]. He is the series editor for Seagull Books Arabic List and he co-edits with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak the “Elsewhere Texts” list with the same press.

Aboul-Ela teaches courses focusing on literary criticism, postcolonial studies, and U.S. literature. His training is in comparative studies and his courses always put readings from the Arab world in a global and comparative context. 

Email: haboul-ela@uh.edu
Link to department profile