After conducting a faculty search during the 22-23 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature hired former concentrator, Maru Pabon, as the new Assistant Professor specializing in Arabic.

Born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Professor Maru Pabón completed her undergraduate studies in Comparative Literature at Brown University and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Yale University with a certificate of concentration in Middle East Studies. She is a scholar of literary modernity across the Arab world and Latin America with a particular focus on twentieth-century poetic movements in the Levant, Caribbean, and Francophone North Africa. Her research interests include the history of Arabic poetry and poetics, Marxism and Marxist aesthetics, literary dialects and creoles, translation, and Arab diasporic literature from the Americas. Her current book project examines the Third-Worldist desire to construct the “voice of the people” across Palestinian, Cuban, and Algerian political poetry throughout the long 60s. Along with Laure Guirguis, she is the co-editor of the volume Art and Politics Between the Arab World and Latin America, forthcoming with Brill in Spring 2025. Her research has appeared in Middle Eastern Literatures and Kohl: A Journal for Body and Gender Research. She has also contributed essays and translations to venues like Bidoun, Momus, and Bidayat. In addition to Arabic, Maru also specializes in Spanish and French.

Join the Comparative Literature Department in welcoming Maru back to Comp Lit!