Diya Abdo

Diya Abdo teaches twentieth-century American Literature and modern and contemporary world and postcolonial literatures.   She received her B.A. from Yarmouk University in Jordan , and her M.A. and Ph.D. from Drew University in New Jersey .   Her research interests are Arab women writers, Islamic feminism, autobiography, and postcolonial translation. Diya arrived at Guilford after five years teaching at two universities in her native Jordan .   She has published articles in Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Eugene O’Neill Review , PAMLA's Pacific Coast Philology , Image and Narrative , Frontiers , and Life Writing , as well as in collections on Anglophone Arab writers and women writers.

  • “How to be a Successful Double Agent: Displacement as Strategy in Fadia Faqir’s Pillars of Salt” forthcoming in Arab Voices in Diaspora: Critical Perspectives on Anglophone Arab Literature ed. Dr. Layla Almaleh, Rodopi. An early version of this paper was presented at WOCMES 2 (World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies 2) held in Amman, Jordan, June 11-16, 2006.
  • “Textual Migration: Self-Translation and Translation of the Self in Leila Abouzeid’s Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Woman and Ruju ‘Ila Tufula” in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. Volume 30 Issue 2. University of Nebraska Press, Fall 2009. An early version of this paper was presented at Self and Identity in Translation: A Postgraduate Symposium at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom on February 4-5, 2006.
  • "Chameleonic Text: Peritextual Transformation in Fatima Mernissi’s Dreams of Trespass and Nisa' 'Ala Ajnihat Al-hilm" in Life Writing. Volume 6 Issue 3. Routledge, Fall 2009.
  • "Narrating Little Fatima: A Picture is Worth 1001 Tales: 'Multiple Critique' in Fatima Mernissi's Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood" in Image and Narrative, Issue 19: Autofiction and/in Image, November 2007.
  • "Sacred Frontiers: Looking for Fissures to Construct an Alternate Feminist Subjectivity" in Womanhood in Anglophone Literary Culture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Perspectives edited by Dr. Robin Hammerman, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2007. An early version of this paper was presented at the Language of Images: An International, Interdisciplinary Conference on Text and Image at Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, Connecticut, U.S.A. on March 29-30, 2007.
  • “Redefining the Warring Self in Hanan Al-Shaykh’s The Story of Zahra and Frank McGuinness Carthaginians” In Pacific Coast Philology, Journal of the PAMLA (Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, the Western Regional Division of the MLA), Special Issue: Transoceanic Dialogues. Volume 42. Number 2. 2007. Early version of this paper was presented at Transatlantic Poetics: An International Symposium in Honour of Denis Donoghue at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland on June 13, 2003.
  • “Uncovering the Harem in the Classroom: Tania Kamal Eldin’s Covered: The Hejab in Cairo, Egypt and Hollywood Harems within the context of a course on Arab women writers” in Women’s Studies Quarterly . Volume XXX. Numbers 1 & 2. Spring/Summer 2002.
  • “The Emperor Jones: A Struggle for Individuality” in Eugene O’Neill Review. Volume 24. Nos. 1 & 2, Spring/Fall 2000.
  • “Thaqafa Dun Ightirab: Nisa’ ‘Ala Ajnihat Al-hilm li Fatima Al-Mernissi” (Education without Alienation in Fatima Mernissi’s Women on the Wings of Dreams). Paper presented in Arabic at The Academic Day for Women’s Studies conference at The College for Graduate Studies, University of Jordan in Amman, Jordan on March, 29, 2005.