Literacies and the Emergence of Modern Egypt

07/11/16 • -1 min

History of Science, Ottoman or Otherwise

with Hoda Yousef
hosted by Graham Pitts Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud
During the late nineteenth century, Egyptian society witnessed the rise of new debates and practices concerning reading and writing in the Arabic language. In this episode, Hoda Yousef explores the discources surrounding literacy in Egypt, which is the subject of her first book entitled Composing Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2016). This work examines how different actors from Islamic modernists and feminists to journalists and officials sought to produce particular kinds of Egyptians through language politics. Dr. Yousef demonstrates that emergent practices of reading and writing had impacts well beyond the conventionally-defined literate circles. Even for those who did not read and write, the written word became an important part of daily life. Through the medium of public exchange created by the writing, different segments of Egyptian society could engage in discussions regarding nation, home, and belonging. « Click for More »

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Venetian Physicians in the Ottoman Empire

with Valentina Pugliano hosted by Nir Shafir This episode is part of an ongoing series entitled History of Science, Ottoman or Otherwise. Download the series
Podcast Feed | iTunes | Hipcast | Soundcloud
Starting in the fifteenth century, medical doctors from the Italian peninsula began accompanying Venetian consular missions to cities in the Mamluk and Ottoman empires. These doctors treated not only Venetian consular officials, but also local artisans and rulers. In this podcast, Valentina Pugliano discusses the experiences of these travelling doctors both in the Italian peninsula and in the Middle East. We explore their interactions with the local population and their effect on the medical ecology of the Middle East as well as the sources we use to write such histories. Together, the experiences of these doctors point to the connected histories of medicine and science in the early modern Mediterranean.
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A New History of Print in Ottoman Cairo

with Kathryn Schwartz
hosted by Nir Shafir Download the podcast Feed | iTunes | GooglePlay | SoundCloud
We often regard print as a motor of social change, leaving revolutions in its wake, whether political and religious. For historians of the Middle East, this line of thought always leads to the (predictable) question: why didn’t Muslims or Ottomans or Arabs adopt print? In this episode, Kathryn Schwartz discusses why this question is often poorly posed and then delves into an in-depth look at how and why people used print in one particular historical context—nineteenth-century Cairo. Touching upon topics such Napoleon, Mehmed Ali, and the Bulaq press, we explore how print slowly and haphazardly embedded itself into various aspects of Egyptian learned life. This fresh history casts nineteenth-century Egypt in a new light by examining the technological adaptation of print not as an act of unstoppable and transformative modernity, but as a slow and incremental expansion of already existing practices of book production.
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