Mikhal Dekel is an Eng­lish and Mid­dle East­ern Stud­ies pro­fes­sor at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York and Direc­tor of the Simon H. Rifkind Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties & Arts. Her three books and numer­ous arti­cles, blogs and trans­la­tions have been sup­port­ed by grants from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Human­i­ties and the Mel­lon Foun­da­tion, among others.