He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Comparative Literature at New York University. His areas of research/interest include nineteenth-century and contemporary Arabic literature and intellectual history, critical theory, translation theory, political philosophy, philology, Marxism and finance, and film theory. His current research project traces the links between civilizational discourse, literary narratives, and the world market in the nineteenth century. He has also written about contemporary Arabic theater and contemporary music in Lebanon. Before joining Bard College, he taught at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU, and at the American University of Beirut.