Alexa Firat is assistant professor of instruction of Arabic Studies at Temple University where she teaches language, literature, and cinema courses. She is the co-editor of the volume Generations of Dissent in MENA Literary and Cinematic Production. Some of her recent publications include scholarly articles (Middle Eastern Literatures, Alif), book chapters (Culture and Crisis in the Arab World, The Oxford Handbook of Arabic Novelistic Traditions), numerous reviews, as well as literary translations from Arabic to English. Her current work explores the relationship between aesthetic approaches, experimentalism and historical literary texts by Syrian authors before the revolution in 2011. She received her PhD in Arabic literature from the University of Pennsylvania and her MA in the same field from UT-Austin.