Nader Uthman

Nader Uthman

Senior Preceptor in Arabic
Director of the Modern Language Programs
Nader Uthman

At NELC, I teach courses in Arabic and direct the Modern Language Programs, where I work with colleagues teaching Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Persian, modern Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, and Yiddish.

I was educated in New York, both upstate and downstate, as well as in Atlanta and Cairo. I earned my Ph.D. from Columbia in 2009. My training is in comparative literature and modern Arabic literature and culture. I've researched how narratives of exile, displacement and migration refract notions of multiple attachment, modernity, gender and sexuality, and identity.

In 2022, I came to Harvard after teaching Arabic language, literature and culture at New York University for over a dozen years. At NYU, I served as a clinical associate professor in the department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, as well as language director and Arabic language coordinator.

The classroom is one of the spaces I cherish most, and I’ve been fortunate to have students from all sorts of backgrounds in my classes. Before NYU, I taught courses in Arabic and comparative literature at Emory and Columbia. Outside the university seminar room, I taught Arabic to staff and diplomats at United Nations Headquarters, and to editors and journalists at The New York Times. With the conviction that study abroad is a key aspect of language acquisition and cultural immersion, I served as the inaugural summer director of Sijal Institute in Amman, Jordan and designed its curriculum.

I have an abiding interest in foreign language pedagogy: my goal is to spark learners’ interest with lessons and curricula that are compelling, inclusive and based on performance tasks and projects. I’ve long been dedicated to training faculty in communicative, learner-centered, and proficiency-based approaches. In collaboration with colleagues teaching at different institutions, we design and host training sessions to introduce cutting-edge methods and exchange materials and best practices.

In the field of literary translation, my publications include works by established authors as well as the latest generation of Arab writers. In 2020, I published Traces, the English translation of Gamal Al-Ghitani’s nithar al-mahw (2006).

At Columbia, I was awarded the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching as well as the Golden Dozen Teaching Award from NYU’s College of Arts and Science.

 

Contact Information

Harvard - CMES
38 Kirkland St., #302
Cambridge, MA 02138
p: 617-495-4078
Office Hours: By appointment

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