Oumelbanine Zhiri

Oumelbanine Zhiri studies early modern culture in Europe, North Africa and West Asia. Her research interests include Arab and European, especially French, literatures, Orientalism and its history, travel accounts and geography, science and technology studies, the practices of philology, and early modern empires. She teaches French and Arabic literature, world history, and theory.

Pronouns: She/Her

Languages: English, Arabic, French, Spanish, Latin

Books

• Beyond Orientalism. Ahmad ibn Qâsim al-Hajarî between Europe and North Africa (University of California Press, 2023)  LINK
• "Léon l'African", ed. by François Pouillon, with Alain Massaoudi, Dietrich Rauchenberger and Oumelbanine Zhiri (Paris, Karthala, 2009)
• L'Extase et ses paradoxes, Essai sur le Tiers Livre de Rabelais (Paris, Champion, 1999)
  • Republished in 2024 by Editions Classiques Garnier
• Les sillages de Jean Léon l'Africain, du XVI° au XX° siècle (Casablanca, Wallada, 1995)
• L'Afrique au miroir de l'Europe, fortunes de Jean Léon l'Africain à la Renaissance (Geneva, Droz, 1991)

Articles & Book Chapters

• “Interweaving Ideologies of Early Modern Empires: A Morisco View” (Mediterranean Studies 23:1, 2024)
• “Early Modern Imperial Philologies. Ahmad al-Hajarî and the Lead Books of Granada” (Religions 15: 428)  LINK
• “Hasan al-Wazzân / Leo Africanus and his ‘Cosmographic Mode’ of Writing” (scholarly introduction to Giovanni Leone de’ Medici (Yuhanna al-Asad), detto Leone l’Africano (Leo Africanus), già al-Hasan b.Muhammad b. Ahmad al-Wazzân, Africa, ed. Andrea Donnini, Rome, 2023)
• “Practices of Early Modern Orientalism: A Latourian Perspective” (Latour and Literary Studies, eds. E. Bloomfield and C. Lyu, Bloomsbury, 2020)
• “An Inconvenient Bodin: Bruno Latour and the Treasure-Seekers” (Early Modern Écologies, eds. P. Goul and P. J. Usher, Amsterdam University Press, 2020)
• “A Captive Library Between Morocco and Spain” (The Dialectics of Early Modern Orientalism, eds. Marcus Keller and Javier Irigoyen-García, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018)
• “Mapping the Frontier Between Christendom and Islam in an Age of Diplomacy: al-Ghassanî in Spain” (Renaissance Quarterly 69:3, 2016)
• “The Task of the Morisco Translator in the Early Modern Maghrib”( Expressions Maghrébines 15:1, 2016)
• “Les corps, les âmes et le droit. Isaac de Razilly et les captifs français du Maroc au XVIIe siècle” (Les nouveaux mondes juridiques, Paris, Classiques Garnier, 2015)
• “Turcs et Mores : Monarques musulmans dans les Histoires tragiques” (L'Esprit créateur 53:4, Winter 2013)
• “Voyages d’Orient et d’Occident : Léon l'Africain et Ahmad al-Hajarî,” (Arborescences 1:2, 2012)
• “Le Tiers Livre, le temps et le sens”, Rabelais et la question du sens (Geneva, 2011)
• “Lecteur d’Ibn Khaldûn, Le drame de la décadence” (Léon l'Africain, Paris, 2009)
• “Sauvages et Mahometans’” (Esculape et Dyonisos. Mélanges en l’honneur de Jean Céard, Geneva, Droz, 2008)
• “Leo Africanus and the Limits of Translation”, Travel and Translation in the Early Modern Period (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 2006)
• Republished in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800 vol. 215, Lawrence J. Trudeau ed., Gale, 2013)
• "Il compositore, ou l'autobiographie éclatée de Jean Léon l'Africain" (Le Voyage des Théories, Casablanca, 2000)
  • Translated into Arabic (Manahil 88, Rabat, 2011)

Book Reviews

• Review of Katharina N. Piechocki. Cartographic Humanism: The Making of Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019. (Renaissance Quarterly, Fall 2022 issue, 75.3. )
• Review of Ahmed Idrissi Alami, Mutual Othering: Islam, Modernity, and the Politics of Cross- Cultural Encounters in Pre- Colonial Moroccan and European Travel Writing SUNY Press, 2013 (Al-‘Arabiyya, 54, 2021)
• Review of Su Fang Ng, Alexander the Great from Britain to Southeast Asia: Peripheral Empires in the Global Renaissance. Oxford U. Press, 2019 (Renaissance Quarterly, LXXIII: 3, 2020)
• Review of Tom Conley, An Errant Eye. Poetry and Topography in Early Modern France, U. of Minnesota Press, 2011 (Renaissance Quarterly 64:3, Fall 2011)
• Review of Matthew Dimnock and Andrew Hatfields, eds, The Religions of the Book: Christian Perceptions, 1400-1600 (Renaissance Quarterly 62:1, Spring 2009).
• Review of Benedict S. Robinson, Islam and Early Modern English Literature, The Politics of Romance from Spenser to Milton (Renaissance Quarterly, 61:4, Winter 2008).
• Review of Matthew Birchwood, Staging Islam in England, Drama and Culture 1649-1685 (Renaissance Quarterly, 61:3, Fall 2008)
• Review of Nabil Matar, Barbary and Britain (Renaissance Quarterly 60:1, Spring 2007)
• Review of Frank Lestringant, André Thevet, cosmographe des derniers Valois (Droz, 1991) (Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance, vol. 54, 1992))

Encyclopedia Entries

• Entry “Léon l’Africain” in Dictionnaire de la Méditerranée (ed. by Albert Dionigi, Maryline Crivello, and Mohamed Tozy, Arles, Actes-Sud, 2016)
  • Translated into Arabic (Casablanca, 2021)
• Entry “Leo Africanus” (Literature of Travel and Exploration, an Encyclopedia, Jennifer Speake ed., vol. 2, New York and London, Fitzroy Dearborn, 2003)

• Ph.D. in Literature, Paris X-Nanterre, 1989
• B.A. in Arabic Literature, Paris-Sorbonne, 1984