Hoda El Shakry's research centers on twentieth- and twenty-first-century cultural production from North Africa and the Middle East, with an emphasis on the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. She specializes in Arabophone and Francophone literature, visual culture, and criticism of the Maghreb (Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia). Her work is at the intersection of literary and cultural studies, Islamic philosophy, film and art theory, as well as gender and sexuality studies. El Shakry’s first book, TheLiterary Qurʾan: Narrative Ethics in the Maghreb (Fordham University Press, 2020), was awarded the MLA’s 2020 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies. This project bridges her longstanding research on Islamic material, cultural, and textual practices as a site for exploring intersemiotic knowledge practices with her interest in speculative imaginaries in contemporary art from North Africa and the Middle East. El Shakry brings her formal training in fashion and costume design (Fashion Institute of Technology, 2005) to bear on critical inquiries into the semiotics, ethics, and embodiment practices surrounding wearable art and textiles in North Africa.