Faculty
Rama Alhabian
Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies
Rama Alhabian received her Ph.D. and M.A. in Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University and was trained in English, Anglophone, postcolonial literatures and comparative literary studies. She was previously Andrew W. Mellon postdoctoral fellow in Arabic at Bowdoin College. Alhabian focuses on connections between Arabic and European literatures: temporal, spatial, intellectual, and linguistic. Her research allows her to travel across space and time and to explore mobility and intellectual exchange in the 19th century revival of the Arabic maqama, a narrative genre that originated in 10th century Baghdad and that centers around the exploits of a trickster figure. More broadly, her interests include genre studies, geopoetics and the intersection of geography and literary representations, translation theory, the travel of texts, individuals, and material things, in addition to posthumanism in literature.
Mireille Koukjian
Associate Professor of Instruction in Arabic
Mireille Koukjian’s research interests include second language acquisition and using technology to improve students’ learning in the foreign-language classroom. She recently was invited to the “Arabic TALK conference” at West Point to present work on using technology-assisted Arabic language teaching and learning, along with methods of assessment for the Arabic classroom. Koukjian earned a master's degree in education from Université Saint Joseph, in Beirut, Lebanon. She is a visiting instructor in Arabic in the Critical Languages Program.
