Bamia is
Palestinian. She was born in
Jerusalem and lived in Egypt post-
1948. She received her Ph.D. in 1971 from the
University of London (School of Oriental and African Studies-
SOAS). From 1972-1973, Bamia received a
Ford Foundation grant to work on a
post-doctoral fellowship at the
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She has shown that women significantly contributed to culture and literature, even in early
Islamic times, and she hopes to combat
stereotypes about Arab women through her writing and research. She was the editor of
Al-Arabiyya, the journal of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic (AATA). She was also a president of AATA in 1993. She is the author of
The Graying of the Raven: Cultural and Sociopolitical Significance of Algerian Folk Poetry (AUC Press 2001), which won the Middle East Award from the
American University in Cairo Press in 2000. Her translation work also received award nominations. In 2014, she was nominated for the
Saif Ghobash Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation for her translation of
The Arch and the Butterfly by
Mohammed Achaari. She is currently a visiting professor at the
University of Michigan. ==Works==