Dr. Habiba Boumlik is an Associate Professor at LaGuardia Community College. She holds a Ph.D. in Social and Cultural Anthropology and M.A. in Arabic and Islamic Studies. She teaches Arabic and French language and literature, and linguistics. Her academic background and teaching experience include Arabic, French language and francophone cultures and literatures, Cultural Anthropology, Women Cross-Culturally, Middle Eastern History, and Arab Cinema. Her most recent publications include: “Female Activists in Tunisian Socio-Political Movements. The Case of Amira Yahyaoui” in E. Maestri and A. Profanter (eds.), Arab Women and the Media in Changing Landscapes. Springer (2017). Doris H. Gray and Habiba Boumlik. “Morocco’s Islamic Feminism. Contours of a New Theology?” in Gray and Sonneveld, eds., Gender, Laws, Social Change. Cambridge University Press (2018).
Dr. Lucy R. McNair is Associate Professor of English at LaGuardia Community College, The City University of New York, where she teaches writing and literature and coordinates the student literary and arts journal, The Lit. Her scholarship focuses on francophone North Africa and its diaspora, including Amazigh literature and film. Her literary translations include Mouloud Feraoun’s Algerian classic, The Poor Man’s Son, Samira Bellil’s inner city memoir, To Hell and Back, and essays and poetry in SOUFFLES-ANFAS: A Critical Anthology from the Moroccan Journal of Culture and Politics. Her most recent article, “Towards an Ethics of Traumatic Memory: Mouloud Feraoun’s La Cite des roses and Zahia Rahmani’s France, récit d’une enfance,” appeared in The Journal of North African Studies, vol 23, 2018.
Wafa Bahri is a PhD candidate in linguistics at the Graduate Center -CUNY. She earned an MA in Applied Linguistics from the Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia and BA in English from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of Tunis, Tunis University. Her linguistic research has focused on the documentation and description of Tunisian Tamazight. She is also conducting a study on the linguistic and cultural erasure of Tunisian Tamazight, its phonological properties and variations, and on language and identity. Her primary teaching has been on teaching Arabic language and literature, French, and sociolinguistics courses.
Mustapha Akhoullou holds an M.A holder in Cross-cultural and Literary Studies at the Faculty of Arts Sais, Fes City Morocco. He taught World Religions and Mythology as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Arts Ibn Zohr Agadir City Morocco. He is also a translator (freelance) and a Poet. He is currently an adjunct professor (ESL department) at Hudson County Community College Jersey City NJ.
Dr. Yahya Laayouni is an Associate Professor of Arabic and French at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the complexity of identity formation in “French” films of children of North African origins living in France. He is interested in questions of religion, gender and sexuality in film. He is also interested in topics related to visual alterity and postcolonial subjectivity. He published an article in the Journal of Religion and Film: "From Marseille to Mecca: Reconciling the Secular and the Religious in Le grand voyage (The Big Trip) (2004)." He also published several film reviews in The French Review jJournal such as "Nabil Ayouch's Muched Loved, Hicham Lasri's C'est eux les chiens, Boris Lojkin's Hope and Danielle Arbid's Peur de rien. He has also published a review of Maazouzi, Djemaa's book Le partage des mémoires: la guerre d’Algérie en littérature, au cinéma et sur le web.
Dr. Nathanael Mannone holds a PhD in Cultural Studies from the Centre for Cultural, Literary and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS, University of London (2017). His research focuses on patronage, politics, hegemony, and capital in North African Cultural Production. Mannone is also interested in informal, quotidian forms of cultural production as well as exploring the relation between activism, cultural praxis, and financialization. Mannone received his MA in Middle East Studies from the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo, while enjoying the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship (2011-12). During that time, Mannone also worked as a research-reporter for The Cairo Review of Global Affairs and was the recipient of the AUC Middle East Studies Center’s 2012 Award for Outstanding Graduate Academic Achievement. Mannone has most recently published a review of Matt Sienkiewicz’s, The Other Air Force: U.S. Efforts to Reshape Middle Eastern Media Since 9/11 in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.