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Mona Ali
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 Associate
Professor, English Department
The University of Cairo, Egypt
Research: New Feminism in the Making: Recent Trends
in Gender Theories: A Reader
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Dr. Mona Ali is an Associate Professor at both Cairo University
and the American University in Cairo. She received her Masters
and PH. D. degrees in American Literature but her publications
also include papers on translation: theory and practice,
travel literature, women writing and post-colonial literature.
Dr. Ali is a member of two of the most active NGOs in Egypt;
namely, the Women and Memory Forum and New Women Research
Center. She has had stories published and participated in
many story-telling evenings within the framework of the
Women and Memory Forum's project of rewriting folk stories
and stories from the One Thousand and One Nights from a
gender sensitive prespective. She is editor-in-chief of
Tiba, the theoretical magazine of the New Woman Research
Center. Her awards include two Fulbright grants; one to
the TESOL Summer Institute (1989), the other to the American
Studies Research Center in Hydrabad, India (1991). She was
also awarded a USIS IVP grant
Selected Publications:
"Mapping the Self on the Lands of the Other: A Reading
of Soueif's In the Eye of the Sun and Serageldin's The Cairo
House" Cairo Studies. Cairo: Department of English
Lnaguage and Literature. (March, 2004.)
"The Dilectics of Resistance and Empowerment in the
Woman and Memory Forum's Project of 'Said the Female Story-Teller'",
a paper published in Tiba (January, 2003.)
A translation into Arabic of Leila Ahmad's Women and Gender
in Islam. Cairo: The Supreme Council for Culture, 1999.
(With Hala Kamal)
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New Feminism in the Making: Recent Trends in Gender
Theories: A Reader
This project aims at compiling some of the most recent
and important work on gender theories in the English language
in an anthology and translating it into Arabic. The main
goal is to fill certain gaps in gender scholarship and activism
in Egypt that include academic and social ones. Due to dearth
of materials on gender theories in Arabic, Egyptian scholars
from public universities, with little or no knowledge of
English, depend on very few works that are written originally
in Arabic or are translated into this language. Their research,
therefore, is confined to certain issues and theories that
are dealt with in these works. Designing a gender course
for Arabic-speaking Egyptian students faces the same problems;
students study theories that are sometimes outdated without
being aware of this fact due to the lack of recent translated
works. On the other hand, grassroots feminist activists
who are usually monolingual join the field with much enthusiasm
but with little knowledge of the origin of the ideas they
are propagating. They, thus, feel rather threatened and
exposed when accusations of westernization and propagating
colonialist agendas are directed at them and fail to answer
these accusations. They also feel inferior to elite activists
who are often bilingual as they usually get their education
in private language schools. More knowledge of gender and
feminist theories will, therefore, definitely be of great
help to monolingual scholars, students and activists interested
in gender and women studies. Hence comes the importance
of the work I am proposing to shoulder; it will be empowering
to all the parties involved whether they are feminist scholars,
students or activists. It is also empowering to Egyptian
women who are the primary beneficiaries of feminist efforts
whether on the level of scholarship or activism.
The NCS Fellowship will provide me with the time needed
to accomplish this work. I have already received invitations
from Women and Gender Studies at Yale and NYU to contact
scholars in the field who design and teach courses on women
and gender studies to consult with them about the best materials
I can use for my project. I plan to spend my stay in the
States to try to get the copyright for the materials I am
going to include in the anthology.
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