Safoi is Associate Professor of French in the department of Romance and Classical Studies at Michigan State University. Her primary areas of teaching and research are 20th and 21st century French and Francophone literatures, film and cultural studies. Her book Réflexions littéraires sur l’espace public marocain dans l’oeuvre d’Abdellatif Laâbi (Summa Publications, 2008) critically examines of the role of culture in the construction of civic consciousness and the formation of a modern public space in Morocco. She has also authored articles on a wide range of topics relating to conceptions of multicultural citizenship, the postcolonial condition, historical memory in a global context, interfaith relations and artistic hybridity in the literary and film productions of French cultural minorities, Moroccan Sephardic literature and other Francophone literary and filmic narratives from North Africa and Québec. She is a core faculty member of Global Studies, Muslim Studies, African Studies and an affiliate faculty of Jewish Studies. She is a former Fulbright fellow and a two time recipient and Senior Principal Investigator of the UIUC Humanities Without Walls award, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, filling leadership roles as producer, executive producer, writer, videographer and director for the transnational collaborative documentary features Hmong Memory at the Crossroads http://hmc.cal.msu.edu/) /Mémoire hmong à la croisée des chemins (http://mhcc.cal.msu.edu ) (2015) and Growing up Hmong at the Crossroads/ Enfance hmong à la croisée des chemins (http://growinguphmong.com/ ). The documentaries were featured nationally and internationally in the official selections of several independent film festivals, invited for screening and featured in the event programs of public and academic venues such as the Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (France), the Collège d’études mondiales (France), the Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations (France), Le Centre international de recherches et d’enseignement sur les meurtres de masses (France), l’Université des Antilles et de la Guyane (Martinique), the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands), several academic institutions and community colleges in the United States, and were recognized by awards including: The Universe Multicultural Film Festival Best Documentary Award (2017), the Impact DOCS Award of Merit (2017), the Indie Fest Award of Recognition (2017), the Mediterranean Film Festival Cannes Best Score Award (2016).
