Cover picture: “Nubian women” by Louis Linant de Bellefonds (1821-22), Courtesy of the National Trust
Join us on zoom on October 30th for the thirteenth of our 2020 #EOTalks series! This event will feature Daniele Salvoldi, who will talk about sex and the traveler in 19th c. Egypt and Nubia.
by Daniele Salvoldi
Abstract
In the first half of the 19th century, as unified political control over the Nile Valley – from Egypt to the Sudan – increased, more European and US travelers roamed the region for different reasons. Many of them were driven by their interest in antiquities and have produced a considerable corpus of literature, including drawings and maps, on the subject. Their observations, sometimes scientifically rigorous, sometimes amateurish, have provided a wealth of information on ancient Egyptian and Sudanese monuments, on contemporary cultural aspects as well as on the natural environment. There is hardly an account that avoids mentioning topics of great interest for gender studies: even the most academic explorer must dedicate at least a paragraph to the sensuality of Upper Egyptian dancers. Prostitution, sexual abuse and slavery, FGM, and homosexuality are very often referred to, most of the time with a strong orientalist perspective. While these accounts have been studied for the archaeological information they provide, little work has been done on analysing the gender-related issues touched upon, a topic surprisingly missing from Edward Said’s own seminal work on Orientalism.
Speaker
Daniele Salvoldi holds a PhD in Egyptology from University of Pisa (2011). He is an adjunct Assistant Professor at the American University in Cairo and at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, where he teaches the History of architecture. From 2014 to 2016, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Dahlem Research School, Freie Universität Berlin, where he worked on a Historical GIS of Nubia. Enjoying a short-term scholarship (British Academy 2011), he catalogued William John Bankes’ Egyptian Portfolio. In 2009 he discovered Alessandro Ricci’s lost travel account of Egypt and the Sudan, which was published in 2019 by AUC Press. He also published popularizing books in Italian about ancient Egypt (2020) and Roman Egypt (2016). His interests span between the end of the 18th dynasty, Egyptian architecture, history of Egyptology, and Coptic cultural history.
When?
Oct. 30th 2020, 10am Toronto time/EST. The whole event shall last about 1hour (c.30 min talk followed by q&a).
Accessibility
We recommend webcaptioner.com (using Google Chrome as a browser) or the smartphone app LiveTranscribe for closed captioning during the event. Notes from the speaker can be provided before the event for those who need it to follow along. Please get in touch with us if you have any concerns about accessibility. The session will be recorded and made available in the future.
Suggested readings
Aldrich, Robert. “Gender and Travel Writing.” In The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, edited by Nandini Das and Tim Youngs, 520-534. Cambridge: University Press, 2019.
Boone, Joseph A. The Homoerotics of Orientalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.
Holden, Philip, and Richard J. Ruppel (eds). Imperial Desire. Dissident Sexualities and Colonial Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism. Race, Femininity and Representation. New York: Routledge, 1996.
Spaulding, Jay, and Stephanie Beswick. “Sex, Bondage, and the Market: The Emergence of Prostitution in Northern Sudan, 1750-1950.” Journal of the History of Sexuality 5, no. 4 (April 1995): 512-534.
