Cairo Papers emerged in 1977, when a group of scholars in the School of Humanities and Social Science and the Social Research Center at AUC developed the idea of the journal. The aim was to produce a monograph series dedicated not only to demonstrate the relevance of Middle Eastern social science vis-à-vis Western theoretical orientations but also to share with dedicated Western scholars the fruits of indigenous research into issues and problems of differential development in the Middle East. The founding members of the Cairo Papers included Profs. Tim Sullivan, Ali Dessouki, Mark Kennedy, Nicholas Hopkins and Asaad Nadim.
Cairo Papers in Social Science is the American University in Cairo’s long-running English-language journal monograph, published by the American University in Cairo Press.
- A key feature of Cairo Papers is interdisciplinarity, best reflected in the diversity of the research published—spanning the fields of political science, economics, sociology, and anthropology, as well as history, journalism, media studies, gender studies, law, arts, and psychology.
- Located in Cairo, Egypt, Cairo Papers’ scope is the production of critical social science and humanities knowledge in and about the Middle East.
- Cairo Papers is committed to promoting emerging scholars in the region mainly through publications and workshops.
- One of Cairo Papers’ missions is to foster the international circulation of knowledge produced in the region by Arabic-speaking scholars and from outlets with limited access to international circuits of the print economy.
- Cairo Papers is dedicated to publishing and debating knowledge produced through original field-based research that is innovative in its methodologies, creative in its questions, and rigorous in its use of conceptual paradigms.
- Cairo Papers provides a critical venue for engaging with timely events emerging in the region from a critical academic and interdisciplinary perspective.
Books from 2021
Biographies of Port Said Everydayness of State, Dwellers, and Strangers, Mostafa Mohie
Books from 2020
On Friendship between the No Longer and the Not Yet: An Ethnographic Account, Soha Mohsen
Book Chapters from 2019
Migration and Refugee ‘Crisis’ in the Euro-Mediterranean Region: Which ‘Crisis’? And for Whom?, Ibrahim Awad
Interest Groups and Refugee Policy-Making: The Case of Germany, Maysa Ayoub
Kaleidoscopic Out-Migration: The Departure of Foreigners from Mid Twentieth Century Egypt, Angelos Dalachanis
Waiting in Izmir: Syrians in the Aegean Region after the “EU–Turkey Deal”, Gerda Heck
Understanding the Public Sector in Egyptian Cinema: A State Venture, Tamara Chahine Maatouk
Culturalized, Gendered, and Fractured Approaches to the Integration of Refugees in Brussels, Alexandra Parrs
Diaspora Politics in Illiberal Contexts: Authoritarianism and Cross-Border Mobility in the Modern Middle East, Gerasimos Tsourapas
Between Italy and Egypt: Migrating Histories and Political Genealogies, Joseph John Viscomi
Book Chapters from 2018
The Production of Alternative Knowledge: Political Participation of Palestinian Women since the 1930s: A Case Study, Faiha Abdulhadi
Oral History in Times of Change: Gender, Documentation, and the Making of Archives: Introduction, Hoda Elsadda and Hanan Sabea
Recuperating Women’s Memory as Knowledge: Sudan’s Conflict Zones, Sondra Hale
Narrating Gender in Egypt’s Public Sphere: The Archive of Women’s Oral History, Maissan Hassan and Diana Magdy
Palestinian Memory in Light of New Technology: Opportunities and Challenges, Nahawand El Kaderi Issa
Memory, Memoir and Oral History, Jean Said Makdisi
Women’s Activism and Contending Narratives of Liberation in South Africa, Noor Nieftagodien
The Novel as a Repository for Oral and Women’s History, Rafif Saidawy
Documenting the Oral History of Iraqis in Times of Conflict: Challenges, Ethics, and Standards of Practice, Lucine Taminian
University on the Square: Documenting Egypt’s 21st-Century Revolution Project, Stephen Urgola
Book Chapters from 2017
We Are What We Eat, We Were What We Ate, Hala N. Barakat
Agri-food System Dynamics in a South Lebanon Village, 1920–2015, Saker El Nour
Killing Them Softly: Dietary Deficiencies and Food Insecurity in Twentieth-Century Egypt, Ellis Goldberg
Gulf Land Acquisitions in Egypt and Sudan: Food Security or the Agro-commodity Supply Chain?, Christian Henderson
Politics of Food Aid: From Politicization to Integration, Khaled Mansour
Where is Our Balady Food?, Sara Pozzi and Sara El Sayed
Reflection on the Concept of Hunger: The Case of Egypt between 2008 and 2011, Malak S. Rouchdy
The Food Question in the Middle East - Introduction, Malak S. Rouchdy and Iman A. Hamdy
Book Chapters from 2016
Sport in the Arab World in Postcolonial Context, Mahfoud Amara
Gender and Sport: Adolescent Girls in Upper Egypt, Lamia Bulbul
Soccer: Shaping the Middle East and North Africa, James M. Dorsey
Introduction: Why Study Sports in the Middle East?, Nicholas S. Hopkins
Street Soccer, Masculinity, and Patriarchal Reproduction in the Streets of Cairo, Nashaat Hussein
Here Comes the Carnival: Chanting and Performance among Organized Football Fandom in Egypt, Dalia Ibraheem
Organizing the Unorganized Migrant Domestic Workers in Lebanon, Farah Kobaissy
The Paradoxes of Women’s Football in Tunisia: The Case of the National Team, Monia Lachheb
Institutions and Discourses of Sports in the Modern Middle East, Murat C. Yıldız
Sports in Egypt: Mimic–Real Spectrum, Ereny Zarif
Book Chapters from 2015
Tumult, Trauma, and Resilience: Psychological Well-being of Cairenes One Year Following the January 25, 2011 Uprisings, Deena Abdelmonem, Salma N. Mohamed, Tiya Abdel-Malek, and Mona M. Amer
Militarism, Neoliberalism, and Revolution in Egypt, Zeinab Abul-Magd
Islah, from Gift to Right, Yasmine Ahmed
Adapting to Change: Tribal Influence on the 2011–2012 Parliamentary Elections in Aswan Governorate, Hans Christian and Korsholm Nielsen
The Church in the Square: Negotiations of Religion and Revolution at an Evangelical Church in Cairo, Anna Jeannine Dowell
Labor Struggles and the Quest for Permanent Employment in Revolutionary Egypt, Dina Makram Ebeid
International Tourism in Post-revolution Egypt: Value Conflict and Economic Pragmatism, Sandrine Gamblin
The Egyptian Economy – A Dream Deferred?, Ellis Goldberg
Islamic Finance in the New Egypt, Clement M. Henry
The Political Economy of the New Egyptian Republic, Nicholas S. Hopkins
Affordable Housing Policies in Egypt after the 2011 Revolution: More of the Same?, David Sims
Egyptian Hip-Hop: Expressions from the Underground, Ellen R. Weis
Books from 2014
Femininity and Dance in Egypt: Embodiment and Meaning in al-Raqs al-Baladi, Noha Roushdy
Negotiating Space: The Evolution of the Egyptian Streets, 2000-2011, Dimitris Soudias
Books from 2013
Agrarian Transformation in the Arab World: Persistent and Emerging Challenges, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
Agrarian Transformation in the Arab World: Persistent and Emerging Challenges, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
Gender, Poverty and Agro-Biodiversity Conservationin Rural Egypt and Tunisia, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
What’s Urban about Rural Egypt?, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
What’s Urban about Rural Egypt?, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
Book Chapters from 2010
Masculinity on Shifting Grounds: Emasculation and the Rise of the Islamist Political Scene in Post-Mubarak Egypt, Mustafa Abdalla
Masculinity and Spatial Trajectories in the Contemporary Arabic Novel, Samira Aghacy
Anthropology in Egypt 1900-67: Culture, Function, and Reform, Nicholas S. Hopkins
Revolutionary Mankind: Egypt and the Time of al Futuwwa, Wilson Jacob
Internationalizing Interwar Egypt's Bachelor Tax Proposal: The Emasculation of the State and its Single Sons, Hana Khaoloussy
The Death of the Father in Contemporary Tunisian Film, Florence Martin
Introduction: The State of the Field of Masculinity Studies, Helen Rizzo
The Experience of Protest: Masculinity and Agency Among Sudanese Refugees in Cairo, Martin Timothy Rowe
Book Chapters from 2009
Gender, Poverty and Agro-Biodiversity Conservationin Rural Egypt and Tunisia, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
Gender, Poverty, and Agro-Biodiversity Conservation in Rural Egypt and Tunisia, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
Revisiting Agrarian Transformation in the Arab Region, Habib Ayeb and Reem Saad
Biodiversity and Social Change in Ishkeul National Park, Tunisia, Sonia Ben Meriem
Of Fish and Profit: Large - and Small scale Fishing in Lake Nasser, Hadeer ElShafie
A Half-Century of Wheat Farming in Egypt: Self-Sufficency, Marketable Surplus, and Farm Size, Francois Ireton
Participating in Agribusiness: Contested Meanings of Rurality and Water in Jordan, Mauro Van Aken
Planning Egypt's New Settlements: The Politics of Spatial Inequities, Dalia Wahdan
Book Chapters from 2008
Intersecting Photography with Text: Reflections on a Working Process, Mona Abaza
Social Ties between the people of al Walaja village at home and abroad, Sheerin Al-Araj
From Archive to Art Film: A Palestinian Aesthetics of Memory Reviewed, Diana Allan
Kefaya at a turning point, Mustapha Kamel Al-Sayyid
"No Ideas but in Things": A Documentary Art Short on Message, Yasser Alwan
Photographic Practices and the Egyptian Imaginary: “No Ideas But in Things”: A Documentary Art Short on Message, Yasser Alwan
Europe in Asia: Mosques and Temples in the Age of Discovery, David Blanks
Sacred Space: an Introduction, David Blanks and Bradley S. Clough
Exploding into the seventies: Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm, Shiekh Imam, and the aesthetics of a new youth politics, Marilyn Booth
When "enough" is not enough: Resistance during accumulation by dispossession, Ray Bush
The Buddha in the Dunes: The Aesthetics of Alientation and the Sacred in the Surreal Japanese Novel, Richard Byford
The Sacrament of Mari Giris: Rituals of Contact and Consumption at a Coptic Orthodox Saint's Festival in Upper Egypt, Cassandra R. Chambliss
Worker protests under economic liberalization in Egypt, Francoise Clement
Communitas or Contestation? Buddhist-Hindu Practices and Interactions at "The Holiest Place in Sri Lanka", Bradley S. Clough
Funerary Riturals in Cairo's City of the Dead: The Sacred and the Profane, Considerations from the Field, Anna Tozzi di Marco
Itineraries of Palestinian refugees, Mohamed Kamel Dorai
Epistemological Intersections: Anthropology and Art - Knowledge Production and the Visual Medium, Fadwa El Guindi
Knowledge Production and the Visual Medium, Fadwa el Guindi
A feminist movement in Egypt?, Rabab El-Mahdi
Evidence of What? The Photographic Archive and its Problematics, Heba Farid