Iman Mersal, PhD, MA (Cairo University)
Contact
Professor, Faculty of Arts - Modern Languages and Cultural Studies Dept
- imersal@ualberta.ca
Overview
About
Iman Mersal is an Egyptian poet, essayist, translator, and Professor of Arabic Language and Literature in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. She is the author of five books of poetry, selections from which have been translated into numerous languages. In English translation, her poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Paris Review, The Nation, American Poetry Review, and Parnassus, among others.
These Are Not Oranges, My Love, translated by the poet Khaled Mattawa, was published by Sheep Meadow Press, New York, in 2008. The Threshold, a selection of Mersal’s poetry was translated by Robyn Creswell and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022, and received the National Translation Award and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize.
She is also the author of two works of creative nonfiction: How to Mend: Motherhood and Its Ghosts (2017) and Traces of Enayat (2019), both translated by Robin Moger. Traces won the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature; its English edition went on to receive the James Tait Black Prize for Biography and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Mersal was a 2024–2025 fellow at the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.
Courses
ARAB 113 - Beginners' Arabic I for Heritage Learners
Introduction to pronunciation, reading, writing, and conversation for students who have been exposed to conversational Arabic, but have no formal training in spoken or written modern standard Arabic (MSA). Note: not to be taken by students with Arabic 35 or its equivalents in Canada and other countries. Not open to students with credit in ARAB 111, 112, 114.
ARAB 211 - Intermediate Arabic I
Intended to expand comprehension and production skills in written and oral Arabic with a focus on intercultural competence. Prerequisite: ARAB 112 or 114 or consent of Department.
ARAB 212 - Intermediate Arabic II
Prerequisite: ARAB 211 or consent of Department.
ARAB 399 - Special Topics
A variable content course, which may be repeated if topics vary. Taught in English.
MLCS 399 - Special Topics
Course may be taken five times when topics vary.