Tarek El-Ariss (PhD, Cornell) teaches Arabic and Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests include contemporary Arabic literature, visual culture, and new media; 18th- and 19th-century French and Arabic philosophy and travel writing; and literary theory. He is the author of Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political (2013), and editor of the forthcoming MLA anthology, The Arab Renaissance: Literature, Culture, Media. He also edits a series on literature in translation for the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas Press entitled, Emerging Voices from the Middle East. His new book project examines new media’s effects on Arabic artistic and political practices by exploring the way modes of confrontation, circulation, and exhibitionism shape contemporary writing practices and critiques of power.