Event

This event has passed. An audio recording of the panel and subsequent Q&A can be found here: Teaching Modern Egypt.

On Wednesday, May 4, 2022, by Zoom, at 11am EDT, the Modern Egyptian Studies Forum (MESF) will host a panel discussion about teaching modern Egypt. This panel will feature four short talks from Arthur Goldschmidt, Mostafa Hussein, Olga Verlato, and Leah Rumsey. It will be moderated by Chloe Bordewich, who will also serve as a discussant. They will reflect on topics ranging from reading (and writing!) textbooks, to introducing students to multimedia resources and the use of archival materials. After the presentations, we will invite participants to respond by raising questions, reflecting on their own teaching experiences, and sharing tips about sources, assignments, and effective teaching practices.

We expect this event to appeal to both early-and-advanced-career scholars who design and teach college-or-university-level courses on modern Egypt, or who include Egypt in Middle Eastern, African, or world history surveys. By focusing the spotlight on pedagogy, the MESF aims to fulfill its mission as a forum that not only features cutting-edge scholarship, but that also helps us all to grow as scholars, educators, and public intellectuals.

Arthur Goldschmidt is Professor Emeritus of Middle East history at the Pennsylvania State University, and a recipient of the MESA Mentoring Award, among other teaching awards. A prolific scholar of Egyptian nationalism and political life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, he has written two textbooks – A Concise History of the Middle East and Modern Egypt: The Formation of a Nation-State – both of which have appeared in multiple editions.  

Mostafa Hussein is Assistant Professor at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research has traced intellectual and cultural intersections between Jews and Arabs in modern Israel/Palestine and in the wider Middle East and North Africa. 

Olga Verlato is a PhD candidate in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. She is pursuing research on multilingualism and language ideology in modern Egypt, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. 

Leah Rumsey is a PhD candidate and assistant director of undergraduate studies in Harvard University’s Committee on the Study of Religion. Her research focuses on Christian religious education in early 20th-century Egypt.

The moderator of this event, Chloe Bordewich, is a PhD candidate in Harvard University’s History and Middle East Studies Program. Her research focuses on the politics of memory and historical narratives in Egypt. 

The Modern Egyptian Studies Forum is an online event series and scholarly community dedicated to the study of modern Egypt. Events organized by the Forum have included book talks, thematic conversations, and discussions on archival access, pedagogy, and publishing. It welcomes scholars at various career stages, from graduate students to emeritus professors. For recordings of recent events see Events. Its sponsor is the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) at the University of Pennsylvania.

As always, if there is someone that you think should join us in this event, please write to Weston Bland (wbland@sas.upenn.edu). We will be happy to invite them, if we have not done so already.