Modern Arab intellectual history, film, literature, and media
Nathaniel Greenberg is Assistant Professor of Arabic at George Mason University and book review editor for the Journal of Arabic Literature. His work includes the ACLA award-winning The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz (1952-1967) (Lexington) and Islamists of the Maghreb: a Modern History of North African Political Islam (Routledge), with Jeffry R. Halverson. He is currently completing a third book drawn from his experience reporting on the opening days of the 2011 Arab uprising in Egypt for the The Seattle Times.
Professor Greenberg is an alumnus of the City University of New York and the University of Washington, where where he focused his doctoral study on the aesthetics of democratization in twentieth-century Iraq, Egypt, and Argentina under the direction of Dr. Terri DeYoung. He completed a US State Department Critical Language Scholarship in Morocco in 2010. And from 2012 to 2013, held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Center for Strategic Communication at ASU, serving as a subject matter expert and linguist (French/Arabic) on a federally-funded project studying emergent public discourse in post-revolutionary North Africa.
At Mason, Professor Greenberg teaches Modern Standard Arabic, film, literature, open-source media analysis, and translation. In 2015, he created the University's first Foreign Language Major concentration in Arabic.
Books
Islamists of the Maghreb, London, U.K.: Routledge. Forthcoming.
The Aesthetic of Revolution in the Film and Literature of Naguib Mahfouz (1952-1967), Lanham M.D: Lexington Books. 2014.
Peer-Reviewed Essays
"Mythical State: The Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria." The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Forthcoming.
"Ideology as Narrative: The Mythic Discourse of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb." The Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. Co-written with Jeffry R. Halverson. 2017.
"The Politics of Perception in Post-Revolutionary Egyptian Cinema." Arabic Literature for the Classroom. Ed. Muhsin J. al-Musawi. Routledge. 2017.
"Naguib Mahfouz's Children of the Alley and the Coming Revolution." The Comparatist. 37. 2013.
"Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad Ibn Jubayr." Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 925-1350. Ed. Terri DeYoung. Harrassowitz. 2011.
"Political Modernism, Jabra, and the Baghdad Modern Art Group." Comparative Literature and Culture. 12.2. 2010.
"War in Pieces: AMIA and the Triple Frontier in Argentine and American Discourse on Terrorism." A Contracorriente. 8.1. 2010.
Translations
"The Secret Organization" (1982), by Naguib Mahfouz. Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature. 58. 2017.
Editor-Reviewed Journalism
“Exit ISIS: Fighting for Laughs in Mosul and Beyond.” Jadaliyya. 16 Apr 2016.
“The Rise and Fall of Abu 'Iyadh: Reported Death Leaves Questions Unanswered.” Jadaliyya, 13 Jul 2015.
“History in the Making: Tunisia’s Revolution.” The Los Angeles Review of Books, 30 May 2014.
“Emergent Public Discourse and the Constitutional Debate in Tunisia: a Critical Narrative Analysis.” TelosScope, 4 Jan 2014.
"African Development Surge Could Play into AQIM Narrative." COMOPS, 7 Mar 2013.
“The Arab Constitutions 2012: Chaos and Strategy.” COMOPS, 1 Dec 2012.
"The Extremist-Narco Nexus Unexplored." COMOPS, 4 OCT 2012.
“A People's Protest? The View from a Cairo Coffeehouse.” The Seattle Times, 28 Jan 2011.
“A Cairo Neighborhood Swept Up in Protest’s Fervor.” The Seattle Times, 29 Jan 2011.
"Chaos Comes to Cairo: Neighbors Unite to Keep the Peace." The Seattle Times, 31 Jan 2011.
“Cairo Divided: Suspicion reigns as violence increases.” The Seattle Times, 3 Feb 2011.
The U.S. Department of State (CLS Alumni Development Fund, 2016)
The National Endowment for Humanities (Summer Scholar Program, 2015)
Chester Fritz [and Boeing International] UW (Egypt, 2012)
The Modern Language Quarterly (Dissertation Fellowship, 2011)
The U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (Morocco, 2010)
The U.S. Department of Education (FLAS, Egypt, 2007-08)
ARAB 250, Gateway to advanced Arabic
ARAB 390, Methods in Arabic translation
ARAB 350/351, Media Arabic
ARAB 325, Major Arabic Writers
ARAB 360, Arab Cinema
Ph.D. (2012), M.A. (2009) The University of Washington
B.A. (2003) The City University of New York- Hunter College
"Ahmed Khalid Tawfiq and the Speculative Turn in Modern Arabic Fiction" (2017). NEMLA. Baltimore, MD.
"Mythical State: The Aesthetics and Counter-Aesthetics of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria" (2016). Communication and Conflict. SOAS.
“The Politics of Perception in the Life and Work of Kamil al-Jadriji” (2015). The Middle East Studies Association. Denver, CO.
“Comparative vs. World Literature: The Great Debate in 21st American Literary Studies” (2015). Invited Lecturer. The Fulbright Commission Humanities Circle. Egypt.
“Abu ‘Iyadh: l’homme revolté [or the Discourse on Terrorism in Tunisia]” (2014). Presenter and Organizer. The Middle East Studies Association. Washington, D.C.
“Emergent Public Discourse and the Constitutional Debate in Tunisia: A Pragmatic Narrative Analysis” (2014). The Modern Language Association. Chicago, IL.
"Naguib Mahfouz's Children of the Alley and the Fall of Mubarak" (2011). Presenter and Organizer. The American Comparative Literature Association, Vancouver, B.C.
"The Existentialist of Baghdad: Jabra I. Jabra and the Art of Political Modernism" (2008). The American Comparative Literature Association. Long Beach, CA.
The Council on Foreign Relations - "From the Potomac to the Euphrates"