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ISRA DARAISEH

ISRA DARAISEH

Faculty of Language Studies
Faculty of Language Studies
Associate Professor
Contact Information
4338
idraiseh@aou.edu.kw
Office FE510

Professional Biography

Isra Daraiseh is an associate professor of English at the Arab Open University, Kuwait. Her research focuses on comparative studies of Western and Middle Eastern literature and popular culture, with a special focus on the impact of the global historical process of modernization. Her publications include the books Tony Soprano’s America: Gangsters, Guns, and Money (2017) and Consumerist Orientalism: The Convergence of Arab and American Popular Culture in the Age of Capitalist Globalization (2019), as well as essays on such topics as the television series Black Mirror and the film Joker.

Courses Taught

AREAS OF TEACHING AND RESEARCH INTEREST

 

Nineteenth-century British literature; Middle Eastern literature and popular culture; Modern and contemporary American literature and popular culture; Globalization; Postmodernism.

Professional Experience

February, 2022-Present: Associate Professor of English, Arab Open University, Kuwait

February, 2018–January 2022: Assistant Professor of English, Arab Open University, Kuwait.

 

August 2016–May 2017: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Arkansas Program in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies.

(Research in modern American and Middle Eastern popular culture. Taught courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature and Middle Eastern literature, including a graduate seminar on Orientalism and Occidentalism.)

 

September-October 2016: Lead faculty member, Colloquium on Orientalism and Occidentalism. Sponsored by the University of Arkansas Program in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies.

 

August 2015–July 2016: Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow, University of Arkansas Program in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies.

(Research in modern American and Middle Eastern popular culture. Taught survey courses on nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature and postcolonial literature.)

Research Publications

Books

 

Consumerist Orientalism: The Convergence of Arab and American Popular Culture in the Age of Global Capitalism. London: I. B. Tauris. Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. 2019.

 

Tony Soprano’s America: Gangsters, Guns, and Money. Lanham: MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. 2017.


Articles and Book Chapters


In review      


Prophets without Honor: The Struggle Against Tradition in James Joyce and Nizar Qabbani.” In review at James Joyce Quarterly.

 

“Deconstructing Orientalism through the Novel: The Multiple Worlds (and Genres) of G. Willow Wilson’s Alif the Unseen. In review at Genre.


Forthcoming

 “‘This is the bloody twenty-first century!”: The (Post)Modern Vampires of Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive.’” Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. In Spoofing the Vampire:What We Do in the Shadows and the Comedic Vampire. Edited by Simon Bacon. McFarland Press.


Published


“Frankenstein in Baghdad, or the Postmodern Prometheus.” Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 32.3 (2021): 388–403.


“History, Modernity, and Marginal Cultural Identity in Theeband Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Journal of Popular Culture 54.4 (2021): 790–810.


“Built on the Bones of the Past: History and (Post)Modernization in Abdelrahman Munif’s Cities of Salt.” Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and Philosophy of History 48.2 (Spring 2021): 167–82.

 

“Lost in the Funhouse: Allegorical Horror and Cognitive Mapping in Jordan Peele’s Us.” Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. Horror Studies 12.1 (March 2021): 119–31.

 

“Jokes from Underground: The Disintegration of the Bourgeois Subject and the Progress of Capitalist Modernization from Dostoevsky to Todd Phillips’s Joker.” Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. Literature/Film Quarterly 48.3 (Summer 2020). Available on-line at https://lfq.salisbury.edu/_issues/48_3/jokes_from_underground_the_disintegration_of_the_bourgeois_subject_and_the_progress_of_capitalist_modernization_from_dostoevsky_to_todd_phillips_joker.html.

 

“Unreal City: Nostalgia, Authenticity, and Posthumanity in ‘San Junipero.’” Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. Essays on Black Mirror. Eds. Terence McSweeney and Stuart Joy. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 151–163. 2019

 

“Tayeb Salih and Modernism’s Season of Migration to the South.” Co-authored with M. Keith Booker. IAFOR Journal of Arts and Humanities 5.2 (Autumn 2018): 51–68.

 

“Guide to the Classics: Donald Trump’s Brave New World and Aldous Huxley’s Dystopian Vision.” The Conversation (August 29, 2018). https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-donald-trumps-brave-new-world-and-aldous-huxleys-dystopian-vision-93946. Co-authored with M. Keith Booker.