Kifah Hanna is an Assistant Professor of Arabic Language and Literature at TrinityCollege. Her academic interest in Arabic literature began when she was pursuing postgraduate studies in comparative and general literature at The University of Edinburgh where she first taught Arabic language, literature, and culture to non-native speakers in 2002. In 2007, she began the very successful Arabic program at Davidson College, NC. She has developed methods of teaching that take account of the distinct challenges that these subjects present to students who are encountering many of the sounds, most of the grammar, and nearly all of the cultural landscape for the very first time. Her background as a native Arabic speaker and her diverse teaching experience have been invaluable, for it allows her to combine some useful pedagogical techniques for teaching foreign languages with a deeper socio-cultural understanding of the Arab world.

Her research and teaching interests broadly include twentieth and twenty-first century Arabic literature especially the writings of Arab women; more specifically the aesthetics of Arab women’s writings on gender and war, postcolonial theory, and cultural studies.