Michael AllanMichael Allan is the Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon and editor of the journal Comparative Literature. His research focuses on debates in world literature, postcolonial studies, media theor, and visual culture, primarily in Africa and the Middle East. He is the author of In the Shadow of World Literature: Sites of Reading in Colonial Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2016) and Cinema before the World: The Global Routes of the Lumière Brothers (Fordham University Press, 2026). His current project, How Language Became Data, examines communications infrastructures that connect Arabic to global information networks. Read More Read Less