• Login
    View Item 
    •   IDA Home
    • Students -- Research, Data, Projects, and Papers
    • Student Theses and Honors Collection
    • View Item
    •   IDA Home
    • Students -- Research, Data, Projects, and Papers
    • Student Theses and Honors Collection
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    An Acre of America in Cairo: The American University in Cairo and the Production of Americanized Egypt from 1919-1948

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    Thesis (81.08Mb)
    Date
    2013-07-02
    Author
    Laguerta, Dianne
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    In 1919, after years of planning and earning financial support, the American University at Cairo (AUC) opened its doors to students from the Middle East in a building formally built as a palace turned cigarette factory turned university campus, straddling the line between “modern” and “medieval” Cairo. But the campus that people now know as the American University in Cairo at Tahrir Square – which moved in 2008 to New Cairo – has a long history of what it hoped to be: a campus at the outskirts of Cairo, right next to the Pyramids. By comparing the two campuses—the real and the imaginary—I argue that the AUC missionaries desired to create a hybrid campus of Egyptian and Muslim identity on the exterior but a recognizable “American” sense of space and culture within students. This internal American space became the place for teaching the “evangelical ethos” of discipline, morality, and order for students who would be “converted” within their hearts if not by name. Using missionary materials from the AUC Archives—letters, committee meeting minutes, class syllabi, pamphlets, building designs, and photographs—my project explores how prominent American Presbyterian missionaries constructed AUC as an ideal space and location for conversion of the Muslim world. By analyzing these documents, one can begin to understand the delicate balance that AUC affiliates maintained between their missionary goals and conceptions of American space, Orientalist opinions on Islam, and Egyptian identity.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/10166/3282
    Collections
    • Student Theses and Honors Collection

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | MHC Accessibility Barriers Form
    Theme by 
    @mire NV
     

     

    Browse

    All of IDACommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjects

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    DSpace software copyright © 2002-2015  DuraSpace
    Contact Us | Send Feedback | MHC Accessibility Barriers Form
    Theme by 
    @mire NV