Yaseen Noorani holds a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago. He has previously taught at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Michigan. His research centers on how social norms and ideals such as virtue, nationality, and the public/private division, have been imagined and represented in Middle Eastern culture in both premodern and modern eras. He has also published articles on modernism in Arabic literature. He is the co-editor of Counterhegemony in the Colony and Postcolony and the author of Culture and Hegemony in the Colonial Middle East.