Graduate Faculty Spotlight | Donald Wright

I completed my Ph.D. under the direction of Antoine Compagnon at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is now a sitting member of the Académie française. He often reminded us that as researchers, we’re called to do one of two things: rediscover a lost text or say something genuinely new about a text by engaging with contemporary sources. This has guided my academic work ever since.

When we read a text, we’re essentially looking into a mirror. Every text reflects some part of the human experience: our thoughts, hopes, ambitions, fears. With religious texts that take shape in the 8th century, the connection feels direct because they speak clearly to the concerns of their time.

But the Arabian Nights is different. It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing people who are like us, yet somehow not us. And that difference isn’t cultural so much as temporal. How do we relate to the ideas of people who lived more than a millennium ago? What do their stories have to tell us? Those questions are what spark my interest in the Arabian Nights, and they are the reason I love teaching this text.

When most people think of the Arabian Nights, they think of Disney: Aladdin, magic carpets, childhood stories. But Aladdin is a tricky example. On the first day of class, I tell students that Aladdin was added by the first French translator of the Arabian Nights, Antoine Galland, in the early 18th century. It’s an easy read for modern audiences, which is why it became the one story everyone knows.

The original stories, which predate Aladdin by nearly a thousand years, are completely different. They include torture, murder, sexual assault and human trafficking, often without condemnation. These acts are not framed as moral critiques or calls for justice. Instead, we step into a world where concepts like justice and divine intervention do not align with modern understandings. The wealthy are often virtuous, the poor corrupt; beauty is rewarded, while disability or disfigurement is punished.

It’s a challenging world to enter, but that challenge is what makes the study of the Arabian Nights so compelling.

I’m not sure I would call this a nontraditional approach. Antoine Compagnon would argue that it is the only legitimate approach: closely examining the textual and historical context in which a work comes into existence. Authors, or in the case of the Arabian Nights, many unknown authors, are products of their time.

One thing I truly appreciate about teaching at Hood is that students follow me into this kind of deep historical and textual analysis. I’m always a bit nervous that the material might feel objectionable, since many stories are troubling by modern standards. But students understand the importance of engaging with them. We cannot erase these texts simply because they no longer fit contemporary values. They are part of our shared cultural past and show no signs of losing their relevance.

My time at Hood College has been incredibly rewarding. I’ve served twice as a Scholar-in-Residence for the National Endowment for the Humanities on topics related to the Middle East. I’ve received multiple grants and was the principal investigator of a UISFL grant that supported many of our students. In 2023, I was a Fulbright-Hays Fellow working to create an archive of Indigenous knowledge in Morocco.

Some of my work outside the classroom has also shaped who I am as a lecturer. In 2016, I worked in Iraq documenting human rights violations following the rise of the Islamic State. The report I wrote later became an internal UN document used to support legal cases before the International Criminal Court. Experiences like these allow me to bring a wide range of real-world context into my teaching. A particularly unexpected highlight came in 2019, when my work in Iraq led to an invitation to a dinner at the British Parliament with then Prince Charles. It was an unforgettable moment.

One moment was with an undergraduate student during a discussion on Orientalism. She was a music major and wrote a paper on the Phrygian dominant scale, known in the Arab world as the Hijaz maqam. After sampling modern American songs, she discovered that pieces using the scale were often highly sexual in nature and unrelated to the Middle East. A great example she highlighted was “Naughty Girl” by Beyoncé. Her work was exceptional, and I still share it with my classes.

Another memorable moment came from a graduate seminar. One student chose to study the recurring figure of the hunchback in the Arabian Nights. She examined every occurrence, traced textual references from contemporaneous sources and analyzed the character’s narrative function. She even explored whether the hunchback represented a single figure or multiple characters. It was a brilliant paper and a perfect example of genetic criticism in practice. Antoine Compagnon would have loved it, which reassures me that maybe I’m not doing such a bad job after all.

Inspired by Donald’s story? Ready to #GOFURTHER in your career? Learn more about Hood College’s graduate programs, including humanities.