Zeena Fuleihan

Zeena Fuleihan

Zeena Yasmine Fuleihan received her PhD in the Graduate Program in Literature at Duke University, where she also completed certificates in Feminist Studies, Middle East Studies, and College Teaching. Her teaching interests include postcolonial literature and theory; women’s, gender, and sexuality studies; transnational feminist theory; literature, human rights, and international law; diasporic literature; writing and communication; and more. Her research focuses on the interplay of sexual violence with colonial power, revolutionary movements, and war, and draws primarily on feminist, postcolonial, and psychoanalytic theories alongside literary texts, cultural production, and legal debates. She has served on the board of the North Carolina Consortium for Middle East Studies, as Chair of the American Comparative Literature Association's Graduate Student Committee, and as coordinator of interdisciplinary working groups in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies and Middle East studies. Beyond academia, Dr. Fuleihan has worked in literary publishing at Coffee House Press and as editor of two landmark issues of Mizna: SWANA Literature + Art.

Academic Degrees

  • PhD, Graduate Program in Literature, Duke University (2026)
    • Certificates in Feminist Studies, Middle East Studies, and College Teaching
  • MA, Graduate Program in Literature, Duke University (2023)
  • MA, Contemporary Literature, Culture, and Theory, King’s College London (2020)
  • BA, English (Creative Writing), Macalester College (2018)

Publications & Presentations

Publications:

  • “Nouri Gana, Melancholy Acts: Defeat and Cultural Critique in the Arab World.” Psychoanalysis and History, vol. 28, no. 1, 2026, pp. 121–25.
  • “Arab American Women: Representation and Refusal.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, vol. 18, no. 3, November 2022, pp. 414–18.
  • “The Fancy Girl Episteme: Tracking the legacy of master-slave rape in the evolution of the tragic mulatto trope.” The Comparatist, special issue on “Comparative Racisms,” vol. 46, no. 1, October 2022, pp. 124–33.

Presentations:

  • “Make the Desert Bloom: Colonial Fantasy and the Rape of the Land in Palestine.” Panel on “The Question of Race in Middle East Studies: Land, Language, and Violence in Cultural Production on Palestine and Afghanistan.” Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Washington, D.C., November 22–25, 2025.
  • “‘An affirmation and a denial’: Reading Palestinian Women’s Writing after Said.” Arabic Literature Forum panel on “The Question of Palestine Now.” Modern Language Association (MLA), New Orleans, LA, January 9–12, 2025.
  • “The Psychic Life of Evidence: Palestine and the Global Mobilization of Rape.” Women’s and Gender Studies Forum panel on “Gender and the Palestinian Freedom Struggle.” Modern Language Association (MLA), New Orleans, LA, January 9–12, 2025.
  • “Unraveling Language: The Politics of Refusal in Witnessing Genocide.” Chair of and presenter on panel on “Decolonizing Politics and Poetics.” Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Virtual, November 11–16, 2024.
  • “Structure Your Chapter, Structure Your Life: Writing Practices for Your Dissertation” (co-organizer). ACLA Graduate Student Committee Pre-Conference Workshop. American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), Montréal, Canada, March 14–17, 2024.
  • “Listening to Silence: Resurrecting Woman’s Sound in Assia Djebar’s Fiction.” Roundtable on “Saying and Unsaying: Ekphrasis and Apophasis as Feminist Rhetorical Strategies.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Baltimore, MD, March 10–13, 2022.
  • “‘Devoire de mémoire’: Transformative Self-Practice in the Lebanese Post-Civil War Novel.” Seminar on “Care for Others, Care for Ourselves: The Power and Limits of Literature and Art.” Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA), Baltimore, MD, March 10–13, 2022.
  • “October 17, 1961: Cross-Cultural Witness and Testimony in William Gardner Smith’s The Stone Face.” Southern Humanities Council Conference, Memphis, TN, January 27–30, 2022
  • “The Cyclical Motion of Discard in Schizophrene and Ban en Banlieue.” Special session panel on “Therapeutic Culture: Affordances And Limitations.” Modern Language Association (MLA), Washington, D.C., January 6–9, 2022
  • “Contradictions of the Globalized Nation: Transnational Subjecthood of Flexible and Exorbitant Citizens in Arundhati Roy’s and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Fiction.” Panel on “Ecological and Postcolonial Belonging in British Literature of the Diaspora, 1940-2020.” American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), virtual conference, April 8–11, 2021.

Awards & Honors

  • Summer Research Fellowship for Research on Women or Girls of Color, Duke University, 2026
  • Evan M. Frankel Dissertation Fellowship, Duke University, 2025–2026
  • Summer Research Fellowship, The Graduate School, Duke University, 2025
  • Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Dissertation Fellowship, Duke University, 2024–2025
  • Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Conference Travel Award, Duke University, 2025
  • Graduate Scholars Colloquium Leader Award, Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Department, Duke University, 2024–2026
  • Preparing Future Faculty Fellowship, Duke University, 2023–2024
  • Bennie D. Ussery Memorial Graduate Student Award, Southern Humanities Council, 2022
  • Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies Conference Travel Award, Duke University, 2022
  • Center for International and Global Studies Conference Travel Grant, Duke University, 2022