I’ve written some public-facing essays, been interviewed on several podcasts and websites, and been quoted or covered in various media.
Essays
Introduction to an excerpt of Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist for Jewish Currents, October 2025.
“Demagogy or Pedagogy? A Better Way to Approach Antisemitism on Campus.” Inside Higher Ed, January 2025. This essay began as part of a Boston University Zoom panel on “Antisemitism: What It Is, What It Is Not, and What To Do”; watch that video here. See more on this topic by my colleagues and me on the Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff website.
“The 2023 PEN/Heim Grantees Talk Translation: Part III.” My notes on Khalil Alrez’s novel The Russian Quarter, which I’m translating for Archipelago as The Sleepless Giraffe of Damascus. Asymptote, June 5, 2023.
“An Ex-Soviet Jew Looks at Syrian Refugees and America.” Marginalia Review of Books, 2015.
“Between Love and Justice: Teaching Literary Translation at Boston University” Asymptote, 2014.
“Not Dead Yet,” Cairo dispatch about Hosni Mubarak on n+1, June 21, 2012.
Podcasts and interviews (back to top)
These are interviews with me. For my interviews with Middle Eastern authors, see my page at Academia.edu.
“From Issues to Action” podcast. BU colleague Phillipe Copeland interviews Conference on the Jewish Left founder Jeremy Menchik and me about our efforts to help education leaders understand the distinction between Jewish identity and pro-Israeli-government political views, July 2026. On my work with Concerned Jewish Faculty & Staff.
Ibrahim Fawzy interviews me on the New Books Network podcast about my co-translation, Memoirs of a Palestinian Communist: The Secret Life of Najati Sidqi, January 2026.
“Transnationalism and Translation.” Yasmeen Hanoosh interviews me on the “Between Two Arabic Translators” series, Arablit, September 2025.
“Humanists at Work: Margaret Litvin,” profile by Roni Lakin, BU Center for the Humanities, March 2025. Among other things, a sneak peek at my new book:
Arabic study abroad novels set in Europe “usually feature a man going from, let’s say, Lebanon or Egypt, to London or Paris, and meeting some kind of Susie or Katie who embodies the host culture and all of its virtues. She’s beautiful, liberated, freethinking, sexually available. It’s great, but she’s morally vacuous,” notes Litvin. “Travelers to Russia and then the Soviet Union tell a different story. The Russian woman is deep. She is spiritual.”
The Russian woman in Arabic literature becomes an extension of 19th century Russian literary rhetoric about women, acting as a moral sustainer of society. If Western women are shallow—and men can’t get it together—Russian women offer a sort of perfection. However, there’s a catch. [Read more here.]
Tugrul Mende interviews Masha Kirasirova, Eileen Kane, and me on New Books Network about Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History, March 2024.
Jadaliyya’s New Texts Out Now interviews my co-editors and me about Russian-Arab Worlds: A Documentary History, October 2023.
BBC Arabic interviews me about Chekhov and his Arabic adapters, 2022 (video; in Arabic)
“Sonallah Ibrahim’s Moscow.” Interview by Tugrul Mende about my translation of Sonallah Ibrahim’s novel Ice. ArabLit, January 31, 2022.
Short interview with me on TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research in Berlin: “I want to see more rising scholars with large and diverse language sets and really transnational interests,“ December 2022.
Podcast: “To Be or Not To Be: Shakespeare Unlocked.” Episode title: “Taking Up Arms.” With Basharat Peer and host Andrew Smith, December 2020.
“Teaching with Arabic Literature in Translation: The Bilingual Course, Backwards,” Interview in ArabLit, 2018.
Interview on Pod Academy: a half-hour podcast about my Hamlet work with Tanjil Rashid. September 13, 2012.
BU Today online magazine: “Cairo, Up Close and Personal.” December 12, 2011.
Interview with Motaz Elagamy on the “Panorama of the Theatre” program on Egyptian state radio. November 24, 2011, 10:30pm. In Arabic. Didn’t get a recording. It was a little iffy at the Maspero building that night.
More media (back to top)
Adam Nossiter quotes me in his New York Times obituary for Sonallah Ibrahim, August 21, 2025.
Nora Berman quotes me in The Forward: “Zohran Mamdani is right about what ‘intifada’ means — well, kind of,” June 18, 2025.
Margaret Litvin Wins PEN/Heim to Translate Khalil Alrez’s Russian Quarter. ArabLit, November 17, 2022. Excerpt from the novel here. (Yes, the protagonist is a giraffe.)
Coverage of Rebecca Maggor’s production of my translation of Mamduh Adwan’s Hamlet Wakes Up Late, Cornell University, 2017.
A San Francisco Hamlet production inspired by Hamlet’s Arab Journey. SFGate, November 13, 2017.
Rich Barlow, Two CAS Professors Win Respected Fellowships, BU Today, March 26, 2015.
هاملت العربي في… الزعتري؟! Al-Hayat article by Samir Frangie on Hamlet’s Arab Journey and the future of Arab cultural studies (in Arabic). April 27, 2014.
Susan Seligson, “New Middle East-North Africa Major Fills Gap at CAS,” On the Middle East and North Africa Studies program I founded. BU Today, May 6, 2014.
Writeup by Ibrahim Ouf in Al-Messa (المساء) newspaper, part of the Egyptian state-owned Gumhuriyya conglomerate, December 8, 2011.
The Guardian/Observer mentions Hamlet’s Arab Journey as an “inspired” study and “quirky” Christmas gift, Dec 4, 2011. Other reviews of the book are collected here.
“Hamlet of Arabia,” profile of me by Bari Walsh in Bostonia magazine, Winter 2009. Thanks to Vernon Doucette for the awesome photo shoot with the genuine human skull, borrowed from the BU College of Fine Arts!
Nov 26, 2011. Profile by Daniele Raineri (in Italian) in the Rome-based daily Il Foglio.
Margaret Litvin 