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. Her forthcoming project is entitled, “Theorizing the Soul: 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

"Egypt’s Three Revolutions: The Force of History Behind this Popular Uprising," Jadaliyya, February 6, 2011 

"The Hidden Location: Art and Politics in the Work of Hassan Khan," Third Text Asia: Special Issue on Arts, Scholarship and the Arab/Muslim World, Volume 1, Number 2 (Spring 2009), 71-85 

"Artistic Sovereignty in the Shadow of Post-Socialism: Egypt's 20th Annual Youth Salon," e-flux journal 7 (July 2009)

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.

Course History

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