About Me

Don Joseph is a scholar of the contemporary Mediterranean at the University of Missouri where he is a PFFIE Postdoctoral Fellow. Dr. Joseph studies migration, exile, (non)belonging, and masculinity in the Middle East and North Africa to understand the impact of movement and displacement on LGBTQIA+ migrants. His interdisciplinary research uses quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate transnational Mediterranean politics, sociocultural movements, and queer phenomenology. His work and research are situated in and engage with Arabic, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Catalan speaking communities and literatures.

Dr. Joseph has published or has forthcoming publications with Edinburgh University Press, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, the Bulletin of Francophone Postcolonial Studies and the Journal of Composition Studies. He has also presented at several national and international conferences such as the International Graphic Novel & Comics Conference, the International Bande Dessinée Society, the Society for Francophone Postcolonial Studies (SFPS), the 20th-and 21st- Century French and Francophone Studies International Colloquium, among others.

Dr. Joseph has also organized several events to engage with postcolonial discourse and activism such as a moderated talk with French graphic novelist Jessica Oublié and French illustrator Marie-Ange Rousseau to discuss their graphic novel Péyi An Nou (2017); a discussion with Moroccan novelist and filmmaker Abdellah Taïa to think about “Writing Queer Identities in Francophone Literature,” and academic conferences on “Trans Artivism and Scholarship,” and “Representations of Disaster.”

For more on Dr. Joseph’s work, please consult his CV.

“Humanism is the only - I would go so far as saying the final- resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.” – Edward W. Said

“L’Occident n’est pas dans l’Ouest, ce n’est pas un lieu, c’est un projet.” – Édouard Glissant