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Department of Classical & Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations

Columbian College of Arts & Sciences

Francesco L. Sinatora

Francesco Sinatora

Francesco L. Sinatora

Associate Professor of Arabic

Contact:

Office Phone: (202) 994-4829
801 22nd St NW Washington DC 20052

Francesco L. Sinatora holds a Ph.D. in Arabic (Georgetown University) and an M.A. in Afro-Asiatic Studies (University of Pavia). His research interests lie in Arabic sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and Arabic pedagogy. In his publications, he advocates for incorporating both Modern Standard Arabic and regional dialects into academic curricula. He has also developed instructional approaches that enhance students' ability to navigate contemporary Arabic usage on social media.

His language teaching philosophy is student-oriented, goal-driven, and grounded in contemporary task-based and content-based methodologies, with an emphasis on developing practical cultural literacy. He designed and taught the project-based course Arabic and social media, where students analyze authentic digital texts across social media platforms to understand real-world language patterns. He was shortlisted for the Morton A. Bender Teaching Award in 2021.

Beginning Arabic I and II (ARAB1001, 1002)

Arabic and social media (ARAB3105)

Directed projects (ARAB3901)

Sinatora, Francesco L. 2021. “Variation and social change on Syrian dissidents’ social media: A sociopolitical approach to a digital sociolinguistics of Arabic.” In Karin Ryding and David Wilmsen (eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics, 532-562. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Esposito, Eleonora and Francesco L. Sinatora. 2021. "Social media discourses of feminist protest from the Arab Levant: Digital mirroring and transregional dialogue. Critical Discourse Studies." DOI: 10.1080/17405904.2021.1999291

Sinatora, Francesco L. 2020. Language, Identity, and Syrian Political Activism on Social Media. New York: Routledge.

Sinatora, Francesco L. 2019. "Entextualization, chronotopes and Syrian political activism on Facebook.” Multilingua, 38(4): 427-458.

Giolfo, Manuela E.B., Francesco L. Sinatora. 2018. "Orientalism and neo-orientalism: Arabic representations and the study of Arabic." In Tugrul Keskin (ed.) Middle East Studies after September 11: Neo-Orientalism, American Hegemony and Academia, 81-99. Leiden: Brill.