6:00 p.m. After the meeting, Hanna stops off at Rittenburg Lounge to hear a lecture. Once a year, Hanna’s department, Language and Culture Studies, invites a distinguished professor of language and culture studies to deliver a talk. This year, it’s Jean Franco, professor emerita at Columbia University and expert on Latin American literature, whose talk is entitled “Cruel Modernity.”

6:30 p.m. Though Hanna finds Dr. Franco’s talk fascinating, she needs to leave early for her “Introduction to Arabic Literature and Culture in Translation” class. In addition to language classes, Hanna teaches Arabic literature and culture in English, including a popular “Introduction to Arab and Middle East Cinema” class. Her research on 20th and 21st-century Arabic literature fuels these classes. She’s specifically interested in the esthetics of Arab women’s writings on gender and war, and is completing a manuscript, Gendered Masks: Sexual Identity in Levantine Women’s Literature.

9:00 p.m. The class wraps up, and after more than 12 hours, Hanna heads back to her office to collect her things and drive home. Her packed schedule of teaching, advising, and research leaves little leisure time, but she loves tango dancing and theater and tries to get to the gym three times each week and to the yoga studio at least once a week. But, she says, “I’m very grateful to make a living doing something I love.”

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