Mary Layoun é Professora Emérita de Literatura Comparada na Universidade de Wisconsin, Madison, onde trabalhou de 1985 a 2019. Licenciou-se em Literatura na Universidade da Califórnia em San Diego (1973) e obteve um mestrado (1979) e um doutoramento (1985) em Literatura Comparada na Universidade da Califórnia, em Berkeley.

O seu trabalho centra-se nas intersecções entre política, história, cultura e literatura; nacionalismo; narrativa; cultura visual; tradução; banda desenhada; construção de comunidades, solidariedade e movimentos sociais; a história do campo e da disciplina da literatura comparada.

Ministra palestras e conferências públicas e participa em debates comunitários sobre estes e outros temas, incluindo Israel/Palestina, Líbano, Grécia, a União Europeia e o demos, Médio Oriente e colonialismo, transnacionalismo e o comparativo, a nova extrema-direita, segurança global e a guerra dos EUA contra o terrorismo, colonialismo e o pós-colonial. Entre as conferências e palestras contam-se: "Reler o Manifesto Comunista" *(SYRIZA - Salónica) *"Conversas com os carcereiros, mundos em que queremos viver e cruzar linhas: Borders, Communities, Mobility" (Tufts University); *"Solidarity and the `somehow' of justice in Palestine and Israel"; Modern Language Association Presidential Panel on "Palestinian Literature: Conditions of Possibility, Conditions of Justice"); "Postcolonial Visions and the Mediterranean" (Associação Americana de Literatura Comparada).

Foi membro do Comité de Direção do Centro de Estudos de Estruturas Sociais e Mudança Social de Haven (1990-2019) no Departamento de Sociologia da U.W. Madison. Organizou e dirigiu viagens históricas sobre direitos civis nos EUA e viagens internacionais sobre justiça social a Chipre.

Os livros incluem Wedded to the Land? Gender boundaries nationalism-in-crisis; Travels of a Genre: Ideology and the Modern Novel; Modernism in Greece? Critical and Literary Texts on the Margins of a Movement, editor. Artigos e capítulos de livros seleccionados: "The Trouble of Others: *Solidarity, Social Bonds, and Visibility" (Athens Journal of Philology), com A. J. Layon, MD.; "Are You Alright?" On Pandemic Death, Isolation, Connection, and Walter Benjamin's "The Storyteller" (Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine) com A. J. Layon, MD; "Here and There, Now and Then: Nations and their Relations in Recent Palestinian Cinema" (Casting a Giant Shadow: The Transnational Shaping of Israeli Cinema, eds. Chyutin & Harris); "Reading World Literature Reading the World: The Poetry of Constantine Cavafy" (Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Literature); "'To Relearn the Sense of the World': A Call to Arms" (Boundary2); "The Times and Spaces of the Postcolonial: Depois de uma categoria" (Oxford Research Encyclopedia); "'Memory and the Essential Truth': Joe Sacco's Footnotes in Gaza" (American Historical Review); "Mobile Belonging? Tracing the Global in the Work of Etel Adnan" (The Rise of the Arab Novel in English, ed. Gana); "Locating Crisis" Journal of Modern Greek Studies; Endings and Beginnings: Re-imagining the Tasks and Spaces of Comparison" (New Literary History, eds. Felski & Friedman); "Visions of Security: Impermeable Borders, Impassable Walls, Impossible Home/Lands?" (Rethinking Global Security: Media, Popular Culture, and the War on Terror, eds. Martin & Petro);* "Telling Stories in Palestine: Comix Understanding and Narratives of Palestine/Israel"* (Popular Palestines: Cultures, Communities, and Transnational Circuits) (Palestinas Populares: Culturas, Comunidades e Circuitos Transnacionais, eds. Stein & Swedenburg); "Literary studies and the problems of disciplinary methods and sources in the study of women and Islamic cultures" (Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures); "The Sixth Day of Compassion: The Fiction of Andrée Chedid and the Gendering of Life towards Death" (Intersections: Critical Essays on Arab Women's Literature, eds. Majaj e Sunderman); "The Wedding Guest: Communities and Conflict in 'Wedding in Galilee'" (Between Women and Nation, eds. Alarcon, Kaplan, and Moallem); "The Multi-, the Pluri-, the Trans-, and the Marketplace: A few thoughts on the comparative and 'relational literacy'" (Passages); "A Small Comparative Space between Identity and Pluri-lingualism" (Actas do 3º Congresso de Literatura Comparada de Portugal); "Trans-culturing the Nation, Gender, and the Diaspora: The Question of Wo/Man and the Citizen" (Revisita Critica); "A Small Reflection on a Dream Thrice Removed of Hope from a Refugee Camp" (Bloch in Our Time, eds. Moylan e Daniel); "The Future Present: Seduction, Struggle, and Utopic Remembering" (Mediations); "Fresh Lima Beans and Stories from Occupied Cyprus" (Cultures and Contexture: Explorations in Anthropology and Literary Study, eds. Peck & Daniel).

Livros atualmente em curso: "Worlds of Difference: Graphic Narratives and History, Situated Seeing, and 'Solidarity'" e "Occupying the National Family: Gender, Sexuality, and Citizenship in Early Occupation Japan and Post-WW II U.S. (1945 - 1947)".