Treating the African novel as an archival site that produces knowledge and preserves cultural and historical memory, May Kosba’s dissertation studies the concept of race through an imagining of modern Egypt as an African diasporic geography navigating the interlocking legacies of Islamization, Arabization, Western European colonialism and Ottoman rule. Her research and teaching center Black epistemological approaches on studying race to identify how religion, culture and politics inform nineteenth and twentieth century African writers’ representations of Egypt, and how they negotiate discourses on racial formation, slavery, Arabness and Blackness.  Dr. Kosba’s Ph.D. is from Graduate Theological Union.