Paulo Lemos Horta

Paulo Lemos Horta is a professor at New York University – Abu Dhabi, where he teaches courses on the One Thousand and One Nights, the theory and practice of literary translation, and the global history of magic realism, which is commonly associated with Latin American literature, but also with contemporary Arabic and Persian works. In his translation course, he invited guest lecturers from the Kalima project, an ambitious translation project underway in Abu Dhabi.

Horta serves as co-director of a multi-campus research group on world literature hosting a five-year series of interconnected seminars across several continents.

He has previously taught courses in political science, the literature of globalization, immigration, multiculturalism, and genres and methods in world literature.

He has also worked as an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, where he was instrumental in developing the university’s world literature program from the ground up. He has co-edited a volume for the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature and has presented his research on the One Thousand and One Nights and world literature at Harvard, Cornell, Princeton, SOAS, and the Universidad de Sevilla. At Simon Fraser University he received a World Literature and Cultural Research Grant and a President’s Research Grant.

Paulo Lemos Horta’s expertise lies in works and authors that have made an impact on world literature beyond their cultures of origin. He is currently interested in the cross-cultural collaborations that influenced the One Thousand and One Nights and in the reception of the works by sixteenth century Portuguese author Luis de Camões, who lived in the Middle East and South Asia.