Nouri Gana is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature & Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently at work on a book on the affective politics of Arab contemporaneity, tentatively titled Arab Melancholia: Toward an Affective Theory of Cultural Empowerment, and editing a collection of critical essays on the intellectual history and contemporary significance of the Arab novel in English The Rise of the Arab Novel in English: The Politics of Anglo Arab and Arab American Literature and Culture.