Description
Until relatively recently, scholars of Egyptian history understood the modern period to begin with the movement of European people and ideas to Egypt's northern shores precipitated by Napoleon's invasion in 1798. From this perspective, modern Egyptian history was animated by the diverse and sometimes-contradictory ways in which Egyptians responded over time to colonial power and modern forms of knowledge. This handbook, featuring 26 originally commissioned essays by top scholars in the field, adds to a growing literature that complicates the facile colonizer-colonized and modern-tradition binaries undergirding this view. Modern Egyptian history is a continuous process of translation and adaptation, invention and reinvention. Bringing together a dynamic and accomplished group of historians of Egypt, the book maps the present state of modern Egyptian history, highlighting the most promising avenues of research, and laying new ground upon which future generations of scholars may build. The contributors address both long-persisting themes in the field, though in new ways, as well as new themes reshaping how we understand modern Egyptian history, and thus Middle Eastern and global history. These include environment, family, infrastructure, intellectuals, labor, law, literature, medicine, politics, popular culture, and slavery. Within these categories, they explore issues of gender, race, and class. The questions these scholars consider reflect pressing contemporary concerns and debates, including medical sovereignty and bodily autonomy; the management of the environment; the rights and movements of workers; courts and legal struggles; cultural expression, production, and reception; and the relationship between the army, state, and society.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction, Beth Baron and Jeffrey CulangMEDICINE, ENVIRONMENT, AND DISEASE 2. Medicine and Public Health in the Nineteenth Century, Khaled Fahmy3. Midwives and Childbirth during Colonial Rule, Beth Baron4. The Re-Egyptianization of the Medical Profession, 1919-1939, Liat Kozma5. Colonizing and Decolonizing Egyptian Medicine, Soha Bayoumi6. The Body of the Nile: Environmental Disease in the Long Twentieth Century, Jennifer DerrTECHNOLOGY, MOBILITY, AND LABOR 7. Coalonizing Egypt: Carbonization in the Long Nineteenth Century, On Barak8. Of Machines and Men: Mechanization and Migrant Labor on the Suez Canal, 1859-64, Lucia Carminati9. Rethinking the Greeks of Egypt: Individuals and Community, Anthony Gorman10. Gendering the History of the Labor Movement, Hanan Hammad11. Dams, Ditches, and Drains: Managing Egypt's Modern Hydroscape, Nancy ReynoldsLAW AND SOCIETY 12. Hostages of Credit: The Imprisonment of Debtors in the Khedival Period, Omar Cheta13. Criminal Law in the Khedival Period, Emad Hilal14. Marriage and Family between the Mid-Nineteenth and Early Twenty-First Centuries, Ken Cuno15. Refashioning the Shari'a Courts in the Semi-Colonial Period, Hanan Kholoussy16. From the Common Good to Public Interest, Jeffrey CulangTEXTUAL, PERFORMATIVE, AND VISUAL CULTURE 17. Egypt's State Periodical as a Tool of Governance, 1828-39, Kathryn Schwartz18. Rethinking Literacy during the Nahda: The Many Lives of Texts, Hoda Yousef19. Photography, Selfhood, and Cultural Modernity, Lucie Ryzova20. Taking Comedy Seriously: Theater in the 1920s, Carmen Gitre21. Hollywood on the Nile: Cinema and Revolution, Joel GordonSTATE, POLITICS, AND INTELLECTUALS 22. Encounters with Modernity: Egyptian Politics in the 19th Century, Jamie Whidden23. Local Enlightenment in Colonial Egypt: Ahmad Lutfi al-Sayyid in Perspective, Israel Gershoni24. State, Intellectuals, and the Past, Yoav Di-Capua25. The Army, State, and Society, Zeinab Abul Magd26. Archives of Our Discontent: Nationalism and Historiography after 2011, Pascale Ghazaleh
