Radwa El Barouni received her masters and PhD degree from the University of Texas, Austin in Middle Eastern Studies with a focus on Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. Her dissertation focused on a dynamic archive of historical fiction produced in the late 19th -21st centuries, analyzing how the works problematize and process their subjects’ relationship to their pasts, presents and potential futures. She critically examined the works’ -through their staging of al-Andalus- intervention in official in/accessible archives, dominant historical narratives, and forms of historical consciousness, reimagining both the world they represent and the genre of the historical novel itself. In addition to historical fiction, El Barouni’s other research interest focuses on the depiction of non-human animals in Arabic and Persian texts, and the configuration of their relations with humans and place in the surrounding environments in both theocentric and non-theocentric paradigms.
El Barouni is currently the director and coordinator of the Arabic Language Program at the University of Pennsylvania in the NELC department. Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania, she previously taught Arabic literature, language and translation at Williams College, Durham University (U.K) and at UT Austin. She also taught and was the main curricula developer in the Flagship Capstone Year Abroad program (Egypt, Morrocco) and the Middlebury C.V Starr program (Egypt) in among other study abroad programs. She was a consultant for the Flagship Culture Initiative 2018-2019, and trained faculty for Arabic as a Foreign Language in the Flagship program in Morocco with the American Councils for International Education in 2019. She has contributed to and designed material for the culture website Khallina.