Bio

I work, teach, and write on poetics, critical theory, and Arabic Studies. I’m also interested in a number of overlapping questions in relation to collective socialities, law, philology, translation, the question of Palestine, Arabic philosophy, Jewish thought, decolonization in global frames, and practices of study.

I have authored two academic books: Poeticality: In Refusal of Settler Life (Fordham UP, forthcoming, 2025), and Iterations of Loss: Mutilation and Aesthetic Form al-Shidyaq to Darwish (Fordham UP, 2015), which was awarded the Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association (2016). In 2023 I edited a special issue of the journal Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory around the theme “Critique and Translation.”

I am presently completing a book, titled Pomegranate Colloquy: Notes on Palestine and Decolonization, and I’m working, in longer time-frames, on two books: one about law and the other about Marx.

Publications

Books

Poeticality: In Refusal of Settler Life (Fordham UP, forthcoming, 2025)

Iterations of Loss: Mutilation and Aesthetic Form, al-Shidyaq to Darwish (Fordham UP, 2015).

Editing

“Critique and Translation.” A special issue of Critical Times: Interventions in Global Critical Theory (Vol. 6, No. 1, 2023)

Translations

Mahmoud Darwish, Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?, tr. Jeffrey Sacks (Archipelago, 2006).

Interviews

New Texts Out Now: “Jeffrey Sacks, ‘Iterations of Loss: Mutilation and Aesthetic form, al-Shidyaq to Darwish.'” Jadaliyya (2015)

Articles, Book Chapters, Reviews

Available here: https://ucriverside.academia.edu/JeffSacks

“Lafẓ: Language Praxis.” PMLA Vol. 139, No. 1 (2024): 120-127. A special issue on “An Arabic Theoretical Lexicon.” Ed. Anna Stanton, Larab Harb, and Jeannie Miller.

“Nonsense: Critique for the Times.” Critical Times Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023): 1-14.

“‘The Visual Poetry of the Work’: Critique, Form, and Life in the Language of Theodor Adorno and the Art of Mona Hatoum.” Critical Times Vol. 6, No. 1 (2023): 114-142.

“Loving Sentient Flesh.” Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 60, No. 1 (2023): 22-30.

“One: Poetic Love in Ibn ʿArabī.” In Literature and Religious Experience, ed. Matthew J. Smith and Caleb D. Spencer (London: Bloomsbury, 2022), 193-208.

“The Philological Thesis: Language Without Ends.” boundary 2 48.1 (2021): 65-107.

“Fanon’s Insurgence.” Postcolonial Studies 23.2 (May 2020): 1-17.

“Philology Everywhere: World Literature and Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq’s Leg over Leg.” In A Companion to World Literature, ed. Ken Seigneurie (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2020), 4:1-11.

“The Politics of Death and the Question of Palestine.” Comparative Literature 71.4 (2019): 357-380.

“The Resistance to Boycott: Palestine, BDS, and the Modern Language Association.” Radical History Review 134 (May 2019): 233-243.

“Against Simplicity: The Languages of Pain in Talal Asad and Etel Adnan.” Modern Language Notes 133.5 (2018): 1304-1336.

“Philologesis: Adunīs, al-Maʿarrī, al-Fārābī.” Journal of Arabic Literature 49.3 (2018): 204-242.

“Poetic Theology: Paul and Form.” Political Theology 19.7 (2018): 629-637.

“Teaching Mahmoud Darwish.” In Arabic Literature for the Classroom, ed. Muhsin J. al-Musawi (New York: Routledge, 2017), 171-188.

“The Philological Present: Reading the Arabic Nineteenth Century.” Journal of Arabic Literature 47.1-2 (2016): 169-207.

“Palestine and Sovereign Violence.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 34.2 (2014): 368-389.

“Falling into Pieces, or Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq and Literary History: A Love Letter.” Middle Eastern Literatures 16.3 (2013): 317-333.

“Untranslatability.” Modern Language Notes 126.5 (2011): 1083-1122.

“Reading with Darwish.” Journal of Palestine Studies 40.4 (2011): 104-106.

“Latinity.” CR: The New Centennial Review 9.3 (2009): 251-286.

“For Decolonization.” Arab Studies Journal 17.1 (2009): 110-134.

“Language Places.” In Mahmoud Darwish: Exile’s Poet, ed. Hala Khamis Nassar and Najat Rahman (Northampton, Mass.: Interlink Books, 2008), 239-272.

“Futures of Literature: Inhitat, Adab, Naqd.” diacritics 37.4 (2007): 32-55.