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UCL Mellon Programme: Interdisciplinary Seminar 2006-2007

Seminar: 25 October 2006 Professor Hoda El-Sadda, Middle Eastern Studies, University of Manchester

Abstract: Translating Ideologies: “Domesticity” in Arab Nationalist Discourses on Gender in the Late Nineteenth Century. Debates on the role of women and their status in society have always been at the centre of nationalist discourses on identity politics and nation-building in the Arab world. The roots of these debates can be traced back to the late nineteenth century, a transformative period in the history of the Arab world when the encounter with the west resulted in colonial interventions, regional conflicts and struggles over definitions of identity. It was at this moment that “domesticity” as an ideology was translated into the Arab scene, as one of the consequences of the encounter between east and west, through two main sites: the print media and missionary schools. It was subsequently/simultaneously appropriated in nationalist discourses and indigenized to become a marker of Arab cultural identity in the modern period. I argue that an understanding of the origins of current debates shed light on the complexities and issues at stake.

Biographical note: Professor Hoda Elsadda currently holds a Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at Manchester University . Her career started in the field of English and Comparative Literature. She developed an interest in gender in the context of postcolonial literatures and theory and gradually concentrated on researching gender issues in the Arab World. She is currently interested in exploring constructions of modern masculinities in the early twentieth century, or “the male question.” She is also working on collecting and analyzing oral narratives of Egyptian women focusing on issues of representation in local and global contexts and addressing the challenges of interpreting “experience.” This is done with the view that representations of Arab women in the contemporary world are the site of power struggles and contested meanings, and she is particularly interested in the geopolitics of the construction of knowledge in and about the “post” colonial Arab world. Professor Elsadda was Visiting Fellow at The International Centre for Research on Women ( Washington D.C. ) in 1997, a member of the The Arab Families Working Group since 2001 and a Yale World Fellow at Yale University in 2003. She is a member oftheeditorial board of the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (IJMES) since 2005, a Consultant Editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, Second Edition (forthcoming, 2007) in 2005, member of the Advisory Committee, The Anna Lindh Euro- Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures since 2004, member of The National Council for Human Rights in Egypt (2004-2005), Arabic Book Review Editor, H-Gender Mideast since 2004, and member of the Core Team, The Arab Human Development Report, UNDP in 2003. She is also the translator into English of the Egyptian novelist Ibrahim Aslan’s Evening Lake (1990).

This page last modified 8 February, 2012 by UCL Mellon Admin