Biography
Esther is a joint Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature and Romance Languages and Literatures (French & Francophone Studies). Her research examines how literatures—national, regional, diasporic, and "world"—are shaped through translation, diaspora, publishers, and linguistic circulation. Working across French, Modern Standard Arabic, Tunisian darija, Korean, and Tamazight literary spaces, her dissertation brings Maghrebi and Francophone Korean diasporic literatures into dialogue. She explores how multilingual authors navigate linguistic displacement to reshape identity, memory, and cultural expression—and in doing so, rethinks the very categories through which we understand these literatures and diaspora itself.
Publications
“When Morocco Meets Korea: An Interview with Ji Yong Chung on Translating Driss Chraïbi’s Le passé simple Seventy Years Later.” The Journal of North African Studies, Nov. 2025, pp. 1-9.
“'Born-Translated': Amazigh Subalternity and the Profanation of Arabic Literary Authority in Mohamed Choukri’s Al-Khubz al-Ḥāfī.” Under Review in The Journal of Arabic Literature.
“Le youyou dans la littérature maghrébine : L’amazighité au cœur de la réappropriation littéraire et multilingue.” Expressions Maghrébines, vol. 23, no. 2, Dec. 2024, pp. 109–29.
Teaching Experience
- CMLT 21355/31355 Diaspora, Language, Identity: North African Literature and Film (Spring 2026, Instructor of Record)
- FREN 20100 Language, History, and Culture I (Autumn 2025, Instructor of Record)
- FREN 10200 Beginning Elementary French II (Spring 2025, Instructor of Record)
- FREN 24700, GNSE 24700 Introduction à la littérature féminine au Maroc (Winter 2025, Course Assistant)