William Granara is research professor of Arabic in the departments of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations and Comparative Literature. Prof. Granara specializes in the literature and history of the Arab Mediterranean in both the medieval and modern periods. He writes extensively on Muslim Sicily, and has authored two monographs, Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World (2019) and Ibn Hamdis the Sicilian: Eulogist for a Falling Homeland (2021). He is also co-editor of the recently published The Thousand and One Nights: Sources and Transformations in Literature, Art, and Science (2020).

   In addition, he translated and published several Arabic novels into English: The Earthquake (2000); Granada (2004); and The Battle of Poitiers (2011). His work on literary criticism focuses on postcolonialism and cross-cultural poetics.