Esraa al-Shammari is a PhD Candidate in Arabic literature in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. She is presently writing a dissertation on the Kurdish-Syrian poet Salim Barakat and his use of and views on language, under the supervision of Professor Shawkat Toorawa. Esraa earned two MA degrees in Arabic from Yale University (2015) and the American University of Beirut (2012), and a BA in English from the American University of Kuwait (2009). She has been named a Janet Lee Stevens Graduate Fellow 2020-2021, and a finalist in the Humanities division for the 2020 Penn Grad Talks competition (formerly known as Grad Ben Talks). Esraa has received, among others, a Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2020-2022), SAS Hopkinson Fellowship (2017-2018), and Janet Lee Stevens Award in Arabic and Islamic Studies (2017) from the University of Pennsylvania, and the Abdul Hadi Debs Award for Academic Excellence from the American University of Beirut (2012). She has also received a Certificate in College and University Teaching from the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Pennsylvania (2019).
MA, Arabic and Islamic Studies, Yale University (2015)
MA, Arabic Language and Literature, American University of Beirut (2012)
BA, English Language and Literature, American University of Kuwait (2009)
Arabic language; modern(ist) Arabic poetry; Arabic and comparative poetics; classical and modern Arabic literature; minority literature; Kurdish authors writing in Arabic; translation studies; postcolonialism; statelessness
Arabic for Reading Knowledge, Instructor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania (Summer 2018; Summer 2019);
Modern Middle Eastern Literatures in Translation, Instructor of Record, University of Pennsylvania (Spring 2017);
Human Development in the Arab World, Instructor, American University of Kuwait (Summer 2016)
“Ruʾā l-ʿālam ḥawl al-dhāt al-ġarība: Shiʿr Wadīʿ Saʿadeh namūdhaǧan,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, no. 34 (2014): 136-162.
“ʿālamiyyat al-dhāt al-maʿrifiyya: shakhṣiyat al-shāṭir, al-jawwāl, al-mukaddī namūdhaǧan fī Maqāmāt al-Hamadhānī wa-l-riwāya al-shuṭṭāriya al-Isbāniyya wa-l-Fārisiyya,” al-Mashriq 86, no. 1 (2012): 149-172.
Middle East Studies Association
American Comparative Literature Association