Office: TMH-220
Email: eb26@txstate.edu
Phone: 512.245.3747
Curriculum Vitae
Biography
My contribution owes a great deal both to the opening of the archives after the Soviet Union collapsed, and to the ways in which I use techniques from literary criticism to analyze historical documents.
I completed a Master’s in Political Science at Northwestern University in 1988 (with Ibrahim Abu Lughod), and a Ph.D. in the History of the Modern Middle East at the University of Chicago (with Rashid Khalidi, Sheila Fitzpatrick, and Robert Richards). My passion for nineteenth and twentieth century Arab history owes a great deal to these outstanding scholars.
An Earlham College graduate, I was Wilkinson Scholar in the Social Sciences. While a graduate student, I taught at the University of Chicago and Auburn University; after graduating, I taught at the American University in Cairo, Cairo University, the University of Texas/Austin, and the University of North Carolina/Wilmington before joining the Texas State faculty.
Research interests
I work on nineteenth-and twentieth-century workers’ movements and labor law in five Arab jurisdictions. My work incorporates the following aspects:
Gender and sexuality at work
Workers’ Individualities vs. workers’ collectivities
Industrialization and modern work
League of Nations’ mandate states and the International Labor Organization
Orientalism in modernist literature (Arab, European, Soviet)
Secularism and secularist political parties in the Arab world
Current research project
I am currently completing a monograph on labor, in order to explain why workers’ movements were significant parts of national-liberation movements in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. My book explores ways in which colonialism made Arabs vulnerable as workers, at the same time as new laws came to protect the labor rights of non-Arab citizens of nation-states. After the second World War, the USSR supported such workers’ movements and national-liberation struggles, and my book explores some of the contradictions inherent such an “alternate modernity.”
My book introduces a group of primary sources that have not been previously cited by historians of the Arab world writing in English. Since I read Russian as well, I am currently researching in files of the Russian Federation’s State Archive (GA RF), including correspondence and letters from Iraq and Syria in the records of the All-Union Council of Trade Unions (VTsSPS) as well as the All-Union Society for Cultural Ties (VOKS). Historians in the region who use Soviet sources include Maher Sharif and Rami Ginat.
The European University Institute (Florence, Italy) sponsored a workshop that I chaired with economist Nadji Khaoui (Annaba, Algeria) on “Workers’ Movements and Nationalism in the Arab World,” as part of this past year’s Mediterranean Research Program. During the workshop, over a dozen internationally recognized scholars offered compelling insights from Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Palestine, the Sudan, and Yemen; we plan to publish these research reports shortly.
Past research
My first book, Imperialism on Trial: League of Nations Mandate States in Historical Perspective (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), I edited with Ray Douglas and Michael Callahan. This project started during a NEH Summer Seminar on “Decolonization of the British Empire” which took place at the University of Texas during 2000; Wm. Roger Louis chaired our panel with the same title at the 2002 AHA annual meeting.
I received a grant from the American Institute of Maghreb Studies to return to Algeria during 2009-2010. This past summer, funding from Texas State's Research Enhancement Program supported my research in Moscow archives. During 2007-2008, I held a Fulbright lecturing/research fellowship in Algiers, Algeria. Past research projects have been funded by Duke University’s Mary Lilly Research Grant, an Everett Helm Visiting Fellowship from Indiana University; a Luso-American Foundation travel grant, a travel grant from the Social Science Research Council, the American Research Center in Egypt, a Title IV Language Fellowship and a travel grant from the University of Chicago’s McNeill Fund. While I was at the AUC, the Andrew Mellon Foundation supported my research by means of a grant to the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Center. In addition, I have held research fellowships at the Russian State Humanities University/Moscow State Historical-Archival Institute, the USSR Academy of Sciences’
Institute of Oriental Studies; the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences’
Institute of Oriental Studies, and hold certificates in Russian language from the Pushkin Institute and the Herzen State Institute.
Publications
Edited Books
Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Callahan, and Raymond Douglas, eds. Imperialism on Trial: International Oversight of Colonial Governance in Historical Perspective. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
Elizabeth Bishop and Guy Beckwith, eds. Technology and Civilization. Boston: Pearson Publishing, 1997.
Chapters in Books
Assuan, 1959: Ziele und Probleme sowjetischer Entwicklungshilfe." In Die Sowjetunion und die Dritte Welt, Andreas Hilger, ed. Munich:
Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, “Schriftenreihe der Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte” series (in press).
“Yemen Through Lebanese Eyes: Ameen al Rihani and Statecraft in the Imamate.” In Bureaucratic Elites of The Modern Middle East, Gul Barkay, ed. London: Routledge (in press).
"Living with ‘Ali Mubarak: Modern State and Civil Society in Egypt.”
In Living With the Past: Historic Cairo, Elizabeth Fernea, Azim Nanji and Farhad Daftary, eds. London: Institute of Isma’ili Studies/I.B.
Tauris (in press).
“Control Room: Visible and Concealed Spaces of the Aswan High Dam.” In Landscapes of Development: Modernization and the Physical Environment in the Eastern Mediterranean, Panayiota Pyla, ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press (in press).
“Economic Imperialism in the Palestine Mandate,” in Imperialism on Trial: International Oversight of Colonial Governance in Historical Perspective, Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Callahan, and Raymond Douglas, eds. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2006.
Refereed Journal Articles
"Fanon in Furs: Theorist for North Africa's National Liberation in Russian Translation," al-Tawasool 22 (January 2009).
“Maternal Legacies: Feminist Histories in Ahdaf Soueif’s Map of Love,” Taiba: Journal of the Women and Memory Forum (Spring 2004) [in Arabic].
Non-refereed Articles
Elizabeth Bishop, “Who Keeps Files on Whom? The Feminization of the Egyptian State.” Proceedings of the Eighth AUC Research Conference on Information Technology in Egypt. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press (2001).
Reports
Elizabeth Bishop, rapporteur. Jyoti Puri, “Conference Report: Transnational Feminist Sociologies: Current Challenges, Future Directions Presented by the Caucus on Gender and Sexuality in International Contexts.” Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of NSRC 2:1 (March 2005).
Book Reviews
Abdeslam M. Maghraoui, Liberalism Without Democracy: Nationhood and Citizenship in Egypt, 1922-1936. E3W Review of Books (2007).
Kathleen Huehnast and Carol Nechemias, eds., Post-Soviet Women Encountering Transition: Nation Building, Economic Survival, and Civic Action. Taiba: Journal of the Women and Memory Forum (Spring 2006) [in Arabic].
Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity. Technology and Culture 46:4 (October 2005).
Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Bulletin of the Royal Institute of Inter-faith Studies 7:1 (Spring 2005).
Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq. E3W Review of Books (2005).
Rostislav Dubinsky, Stormy Applause: Making Music in a Worker’s State, Slavic Review 52:3 (Autumn 1993).
Selected Papers Presented at Professional Meetings
“The Card in Her Purse: Citizenship and Gender in Arab Egypt,” panel, “Family, Gender and Law, 18th to the 20th centuries,” Middle East Studies Association of North America annual meeting, Montréal, Canada (November 2007).
“Tashkent Postcards: Algeria’s Literature of Liberation in the USSR,” panel, “Projecting a Soviet Image to the Third World, 1958-1968,” Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies annual meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana (November 2007).
“Fanon in Furs: Theorist for North Africa’s National Liberation in Russian Translation,” Second World Congress of Middle East Studies (WOCMES-2), Amman, Jordan (June 2006).
“Tashkent Postcards: Algerian Authors at the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conference, 1958,” Second World Congress of Middle East Studies (WOCMES-2), Amman, Jordan (June 2006).
“Egyptian Warmth for Soviet Silver Screens, 1958-1963,” roundtable, “Screening Empire: Industrialized Nations Confront Cinema and the Non-West,” American Historical Association annual meeting, Philadelphia PA (January 2006).
Selected Invited Talks, Lectures, Presentations
“Tashkent Postcards: Algeria’s Literature of Liberation in the USSR,” Centre d’Etudes Maghrébines en Algérie/Université d’Oran, Oran, Algeria (May 2008).
“Stormy Times: The Tempest as Public Space in the Postcolonial Arab Middle East and North Africa,” invited lecture, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland (November 2005).
“First Person Singular: Soviet Engineers, Islamic Patriarchy, and Women Crane Operators,” invited lecture, University of Michigan Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, Ann Arbor MI (October 2004).
“First person singular: Soviet engineers, Islamic patriarchy, and women crane operators,” invited lecture, University of Michigan Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, October 2004; Colby College Science and Technology Studies speakers’ series (February 2004).
“Technology and puzzles of modernity in the Arab world,” invited lecture, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Arizona (May 2004).
Selected Workshops
“Yemenis in Aden as Workers and Trade Union Leaders,” workshop “Workers Movements and Nationalism in the Arab World,” Tenth Mediterranean Research Meeting, Mediterranean Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Montacatini Terme (March 2009).
“Individualism in Colonial North Africa’s Press: Droit d’auteur versus Copyright,” workshop “Between Politics, Social History, and Culture: The Press in the Middle East and North Africa Before Independence,” Ninth Mediterranean Research Meeting, Mediterranean Programme, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, European University Institute, Montacatini Terme (March 2008).
“Control Room: Visible and Concealed Spaces of the Aswan High Dam,” workshop “Uncertain Environments: Natural Hazards, Risk, and Insurance in Historical Perspective,” German Historical Institute, Washington DC (September 2007).
“Where You Least Expect It: Hegel and Gender, NY 1982,” [read at] symposium, “Hegel and Gender/Hegel und das Geschlect,” Finnland-Institut in Deutschland, Research Center of Excellence in Political Thought and Conceptual Change (Academy of Finland), Berlin, Germany (March 2007).
“Fanon in Furs: Theorist for North Africa’s National Liberation in Russian Translation,” summer academy, “Travelling Traditions: Comparative Perspectives on Near Eastern Literatures,” Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, Fritz Thyssen Foundation, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Anis Makdisi Program in Literature (American University in Beirut), Beirut, Lebanon (September 2006).
“Three Conversations With Little Red,” [read at] IX Fulbright Summer School in the Humanities, “Consumption as Communication,” St. Petersburg, Russia (June 2006).
Graduate Students
I am especially interested in supervising graduate students’ research in political, economic, and intellectual history of the Arab world.
