Muhsin J. al-Musawi is professor of classical and modern Arabic literature, comparative and cultural studies at Columbia University. He is the author of over thirty books (including 6 novels) and over sixty scholarly articles. His books include: The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights (2009); The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (2003); Arabic Poetry: Trajectories of Modernity and Tradition (2006); Reading Iraq: Culture and Power in Conflict (2006); Islam on the Street: Religion in Arabic Literature (2009), selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2010; The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters: Arabic Knowledge Construction (2015); Arabic Disclosures: The Postcolonial Autobiographical Atlas (July 2022); The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures (Aug. 2021).

His edited volumes include Arabic Literary Thresholds: Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship (2009) and Arabic Literature for the Classroom (2017). He is the editor of the Journal of Arabic Literature, the foremost academic journal in the field of Arabic literature. He has also served as academic consultant for numerous academic institutions in the United States and abroad.

Professor al-Musawi is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the highly prestigious 2002 Owais Award in Literary Criticism, the 2018 Kuwait Prize in Arabic Language and Literature, and King Faisal Prize in Arabic Literature in English, 2022.