Mohja Kahf

 

Mohja Kahf is a professor at the University of Arkansas since 1995, Dr. Mohja Kahf was born in Syria, grew up in the Midwest, and finished high school in New Jersey. She earned her doctorate in comparative literature at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (1994).  Kahf’s novel about a Syrian girl growing up in Indiana, The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf, has been chosen for the “One Book” project in several places, including Bloomington, Indiana and Indiana University East. “But where’s my movie offer?” she asks. Kahf’s most recent poetry collection, Hagar Poems, is a feminist exploration of figures common to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Her essay about the difficult birth of her son, “The Caul of Inshallah,” won a Pushcart Prize. A founding member of RAWI (the Radius of Arab American Writers), Kahf has also served on the Ozark Poets and Writers committee in her hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas. Kahf is the author of a scholarly monograph, Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque and another poetry book, E-mails from Scheherazad.