U.C. Davis History Department - Faculty

Omnia El Shakry
Assistant Professor

E: oselshakry@ucdavis.edu
T: 530-752-9980
O: 3211 SSH

Academic Biography

Professor El Shakry received her B.A. from the American University in Cairo, with a focus on the social sciences. After returning to the U.S. she received her M.A. in Middle East Studies from N.Y.U., and then her Ph.D. from Princeton University’s History department. Her first book is a history of social science in Egypt from 1890-1945. It explores the history of anthropology, human geography and demography and looks at three major debates between European ‘men on the spot’ in Egypt and Egyptian nationalist intellectuals. These were, in the field of anthropology: the question of the racial origins of the ancient and modern-day Egyptians; in human geography: the optimal form of social organization for the peasantry; and in demography: the question of whether or not Egypt was over-populated. Her forthcoming project is entitled, “Divine Governance: Islam, Modernity, and the Construction of Selfhood in Twentieth Century Egypt.”

Research Interests

History of the Modern Middle East (especially Egypt), History of Colonialism, Modern European Intellectual History

Selected Publications

The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt, Stanford University Press, 2007.

“Barren Land and Fecund Bodies: the Emergence of Population Discourse in Interwar Egypt,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (August 2005): 351-372.

“Cairo as Capital of Socialist Revolution?” in Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Middle East, edited by Diane Singerman and Paul Amar (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press), 2006.

“Science: Medicalization, and the Female Body,” in Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Volume 3: Family, Body, Sexuality and Health, ed. S. Joseph, et. al. (Leiden: Brill), 2005, pp. 353-359.

“Schooled Mothers and Structured Play: Child-Rearing in Turn of the Century Egypt,” in Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East, ed. Lila Abu-Lughod (Princeton: Princeton University Press and Cairo: American University in Cairo Press), 1998.

Courses Taught

Lecture courses: Colonialism and the Making of the Modern World; Introduction to the Middle East; Modern Middle East, 1750-1914; The Middle East in the Twentieth Century Seminars: Colonialism and its discontents; Gender and Sexuality in the Modern Middle East; Gender, Sexuality, and Modernity in Comparative Perspective