The literatures, cultures and geopolitics of the modern Middle East and North Africa are defining factors in Dr. Graham Liddell’s scholarship and teaching.

His Hope College courses include Expository Writing 1 and literature-focused classes on unauthorized migration, the global Arab diaspora and the Arabian Nights.

Graham minored in Arabic as an undergraduate student, and afterwards spent three years working in Mideast journalism. In 2013–14 he was based in the West Bank, where he wrote about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

In graduate school, Graham did volunteer work and field research in Greece, interviewing asylum seekers from Syria and Afghanistan for his dissertation project on narratives of unauthorized migration.

Meanwhile, Graham developed his craft as a translator from Arabic to English, working on the editorial team for the literary translation journal Absinthe and later editing a special issue on contemporary Arab migration literature.

He has been teaching in the Department of English since 2023.

AREAS OF EXPERTISE

• Modern Arabic literature
• Migration and refugee studies
• Literary translation
• Ethnography

EDUCATION

• Ph.D., comparative literature, University of Michigan, 2023
• Graduate certificate in critical translation studies, University of Michigan, 2022
• B.A., English and writing, Grand Valley State University, 2013

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• “What Can Palestinian Literature Tell Us about Amputations in Gaza?,” ArabLit, 2024
• Translation from Arabic to English of “A Life Dipped in Blood” by Yousri Alghoul, The Stinging Fly, 2024
• Translation from Arabic to English of “Today My Sight Is Sharp” by Yousri Alghoul, ArabLit Quarterly, 2024
• Orphaned of Light: Translating Arab and Arabophone Migration, editor and contributor; Issue 28 of Absinthe: World Literature in Translation, 2022
• “‘A Ḥarrāg’s Account’: Craftily Narrating and Navigating the EU’s Morphing Borderscape,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2022
• Translation from Arabic to English of two stories from Sextet of the Six-Day War by Emile Habiby, with introduction, Banipal: Magazine of Modern Arab Literature, 2022
• “Love of Soccer Bridges Cultural Divides in Diverse Michigan City,” USA Today, 2019

OUTSIDE THE COLLEGE

Graham is a lover of all types of music. He enjoys singing Arabic songs to his daughter before bedtime, and also singing hymns in his church choir. He writes music (mostly the lyrics these days) with his childhood friend; eventually they’ll finish the experimental folk album they’ve been working on for the better part of a decade. Graham roots for Arsenal in the English Premier League and for any teams that aren’t Red Bull in Formula 1. He can’t seem to interest his wife in either soccer or motor racing; she, however, recently got him hooked on trivia.