Articles by Nefertiti Takla
International Journal of Middle East Studies
This roundtable on women and crime was inspired by a discussion at a CUNY Dissections Seminar in ... more This roundtable on women and crime was inspired by a discussion at a CUNY Dissections Seminar in April 2021, where Gülhan Balsoy presented her work in progress on Ottoman crime fiction in the early 20th century. The focus of her paper was a popular murder mystery series called The National Collection of Murders, which had been published in Istanbul in 1914. The protagonists of this fictional crime series were a mother and daughter known as the Dark Witch and the Bloody Fairy, who led an underground criminal gang living in a secret subterranean world beneath the city of Istanbul. While reading her paper the night before the seminar, I could not help but notice striking parallels between this fictional Ottoman murder mystery and the sensationalized media coverage of a 1921 Egyptian serial murder case, popularly known by the name of its alleged perpetrators, Raya and Sakina. In both the fictive Ottoman story and the Egyptian media coverage of a real crime, two sets of female relatives ...
The Routledge Global History of Feminism, 2021
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2021
This article analyzes the sensationalized media coverage of a serial murder case during the Egypt... more This article analyzes the sensationalized media coverage of a serial murder case during the Egyptian revolution of the early interwar era. Despite conflicting evidence, the media blamed the murders on two sisters from southern Egypt named Raya and Sakina. Through a close reading of Egyptian editorials and news reports, I argue that middle-class nationalists constructed Raya and Sakina as barbaric women who threatened to pull the nation back in time in order to legitimize their claim to power. Borrowing from Ann Stoler's analysis of the relationship between race and sexuality and Maria Lugones's concept of the modern/colonial gender system, this article maintains that race was as central to nationalist conceptions of female barbarism as gender, sexuality, and class. The enduring depiction of Raya and Sakina as the quintessential barbaric Egyptian women symbolizes the way in which the modern woman was constructed at the intersection of race and sexuality.
"Introduction to Prostitution in Alexandria," in Jean-Michel Chaumont, Magaly Rodriguez Garcia an... more "Introduction to Prostitution in Alexandria," in Jean-Michel Chaumont, Magaly Rodriguez Garcia and Paul Servais, eds., Trafficking in Women 1924-1926 - The Paul McKinsie Reports for the League of Nations, "History of the United Nations System" series (New York, United Nations Publications Office, 2017), 7 - 12.
Dissertation by Nefertiti Takla
My dissertation analyzes the effects of World War I on the port city of Alexandria, Egypt through... more My dissertation analyzes the effects of World War I on the port city of Alexandria, Egypt through the investigation and trial of a serial murder case that took place in 1920 - 21. The victims of the serial murders were seventeen women who had engaged in clandestine sex work in Alexandria during the war, and their death marked the rise of domestic trafficking networks in interwar Egypt. Two of the female accomplices to the murders, Raya and Sakina, became scapegoats for the crime and were the first women in Egyptian history to receive the death penalty. Numerous Egyptian films, TV shows and comedies have been produced about these murders in recent decades, and the case is still widely known throughout the Middle East today as "Raya and Sakina." Despite the many afterlives of this case, no historian has studied the two thousand pages of handwritten legal records that were produced about these murders. My dissertation utilizes the records of the Egyptian National Archives and Library, the microfilm collection of the National Judicial Studies Center in Egypt, and the digitized materials of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina to analyze the case in its broader historical context. I argue that the murder of the clandestine sex workers and the execution of Raya and Sakina marked the formation of new relationships of power between workers, the state, and an expanding middle class, and new discursive relationships between gender, sexuality, class and criminality. This study examines how these relationships were institutionalized legally, materially, spatially, and discursively, leading to the spread of middle-class modernity in Egypt and the beginning of the end of cosmopolitan Alexandria.
Conference Presentations by Nefertiti Takla
Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, 2019
Centennial of the 1919 Egyptian Revolution Conference, CUNY Graduate Center, 2019
World Congress for Middle East Studies, University of Seville, 2018
Shortly after the beginning of World War I, the colonial state in Egypt implemented a series of e... more Shortly after the beginning of World War I, the colonial state in Egypt implemented a series of economic policies to strengthen central state control over the country’s resources. This centralized wartime economy was characterized by price ceilings and export bans on essential foodstuffs, capital controls, such as regulating the price of gold and banning its exportation, and the monopolization of shipping routes for the purposes of war, which essentially halted foreign trade in the port city of Alexandria, Egypt. Using trade statistics, petitions, newspapers, and legal records, this paper will show that these colonial state policies weakened large businesses in Alexandria that were dependent on global trade and strengthened small, local businesses, particularly those in the informal economy. The growth of the informal economy was simultaneously accompanied by the informalization of labor and the spread of illicit markets. WWI thus marked a crisis of global capitalism, one that empowered local producers and traders in Alexandria and disempowered the colonial bourgeoisie.
After the war, the colonial state in Egypt moved away from a centralized wartime economy by gradually removing price controls and trade restrictions. The reintegration of Alexandria into the world economy in the early interwar era resulted in a sudden influx of foreign goods and populations, a surge in the circulation and price of gold, and rapid inflation. This paper will argue that this trade and economic liberalization empowered large businesses and the colonial bourgeoisie, leading to the growth of the formal economy and harming local producers and traders in Alexandria. The deregulation of the formal economy after the war was further accompanied by state policies designed to regulate the informal economy, including frequent police raids on clandestine brothels, harsher penalties against merchants involved in illicit trade, and new tariffs on local fishermen. This paper will explore the ways in which the colonial state’s attempts to formalize the economy and reintegrate Alexandria into a capitalist world system resulted in the growing exploitation of workers in both the formal and informal economy, leading to large-scale working-class mobilizations against the colonial state after the war during a period of Egyptian nationalist organizing.
On May 20, 1921, widespread uprisings erupted in the mixed working class/petit bourgeois neighbor... more On May 20, 1921, widespread uprisings erupted in the mixed working class/petit bourgeois neighborhoods of Alexandria, Egypt. Native workers supported by low-ranking police officers attacked Greeks, Italians, and Levantine Christians, destroying homes, shops, and municipal infrastructure. In response, Greeks, Italians and high-ranking colonial police officers shot back at native crowds from the windows of buildings and cars. This paper looks at this episode of subaltern violence as a pivotal moment in the history of cosmopolitan Alexandria, arguing that the violence was a product of tensions between workers and the petit bourgeoisie sparked by the effects of wartime colonial exploitation. I use a variety of legal proceedings, statistics, and media reports from this period to show that these tensions formed at the intersection of race, class and religion as both unemployed native workers and foreign shopkeepers moved into these neighborhoods at an unprecedented rate during and after the war. This rapid pace of migration placed a strain on housing and resources, pushing native workers into makeshift homes on the outskirts of the communities. The spread of wage labor after the war, combined with growing linkages between the formal and informal economy, exacerbated these tensions.
In the wake of the riots, British colonial administrators launched a new town planning scheme in Alexandria that mapped class relations onto the urban landscape. Middle class enclaves were created in the form of suburbs, parks, public gardens, theaters, and sporting arenas, and an emphasis was placed on increasing spatial visibility through the construction of wider streets and avenues. Through an analysis of the role of both local actors and colonial administrators in the processes of urbanization and suburbanization, this paper engages with the work of critical geographers such as David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre to theorize the relationship between the production of space and social formation in early interwar Alexandria. Using a combination of legal proceedings, statistics, media reports and the 1921 Alexandria town planning scheme, this paper bridges the gap between a bottom-up and top-down analysis of class formation by theorizing it as a simultaneously socioeconomic, political and spatial process guided by both local and colonial interests.
In the wake of the Egyptian Nationality Law of 1926, the Alexandria Police Department increased i... more In the wake of the Egyptian Nationality Law of 1926, the Alexandria Police Department increased its expulsion of non-Egyptian ‘undesirables’ involved in the commercial sex industry. In 1930, the growing frequency of expulsions led to the establishment of a separate foreign criminal branch of the Alexandria Police Department, and the category of ‘undesirables’ was expanded to include those who had a history of drug use. According to French consular records from Alexandria, the majority of these ‘undesirables’ were migrant workers, yet at least some protested their expulsion on the basis that they had been born and raised in Alexandria and knew nothing about the alleged homeland to which they were being expelled. These expulsions speak not only to the transnational character of Alexandria’s working class at this time, but also to the transnational conceptions of criminality which were fundamental to the regulation of subaltern mobility and the establishment of a global nation-state system. As the spread of middle-class modernity produced new understandings of the criminal rooted in gender and sexual deviance, illegal vice became the face of a new interwar criminality that grasped the attention of both Egyptian middle-class nationalists and the League of Nations.
Although historians often trace the Egyptianization of Alexandria to the nationalization policies of Gamal Abdel Nasser, consular records documenting the expulsion of ‘undesirables’ in the interwar period suggests that the Egyptianization of Alexandria began decades before the Nasser period through nationalist control of subaltern bodies rather than elite property. Policing gender and sexual performances in Alexandria became integral to the nationalist project of constructing and policing territorial borders. At the same time, the transnational conceptions of criminality that gave rise to these policies challenges the juxtaposition of the national and the global, highlighting the way in which the nationalization of working-class bodies through the imposition of anti-vice measures was central to both the Egyptian nationalist project as well as the making of an international political order.
During WWI, some women in Egypt responded to the precarity induced by military occupation through... more During WWI, some women in Egypt responded to the precarity induced by military occupation through their engagement in non-marital forms of love and sexuality. After the war, these practices were increasingly stigmatized by both colonial officials and Egyptian nationalists seeking control of the state. This paper examines the way in which interwar discourse about female sexuality shaped legal proceedings against women, and looks critically at questions of agency and resistance during a time in which the gender, sexual and class politics of emerging nation-states introduced new forms of precarity into the lives of working-class women.
Books by Nefertiti Takla
Egypte/Monde arabe, 2018
This issue is devoted to Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria, which, despite its historical a... more This issue is devoted to Egypt’s second largest city, Alexandria, which, despite its historical and cultural fame - or because of it - suffers from a serious lack of knowledge. Indeed, apart from the myths and preconceptions that dominate narratives of this Mediterranean city, we know very little about its contemporary and/or everyday dynamics. Bringing together a group of specialists across many disciplines (anthropology, ethnomusicology, history, political science, sociology), this issue is based on empirical studies treating Alexandria in a renewed way, promoting narratives from within instead of the usual images found in the literature.
Book Reviews by Nefertiti Takla
Feminist Formations, 2018
Review of Middle East Studies, 2018
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Articles by Nefertiti Takla
Dissertation by Nefertiti Takla
Conference Presentations by Nefertiti Takla
After the war, the colonial state in Egypt moved away from a centralized wartime economy by gradually removing price controls and trade restrictions. The reintegration of Alexandria into the world economy in the early interwar era resulted in a sudden influx of foreign goods and populations, a surge in the circulation and price of gold, and rapid inflation. This paper will argue that this trade and economic liberalization empowered large businesses and the colonial bourgeoisie, leading to the growth of the formal economy and harming local producers and traders in Alexandria. The deregulation of the formal economy after the war was further accompanied by state policies designed to regulate the informal economy, including frequent police raids on clandestine brothels, harsher penalties against merchants involved in illicit trade, and new tariffs on local fishermen. This paper will explore the ways in which the colonial state’s attempts to formalize the economy and reintegrate Alexandria into a capitalist world system resulted in the growing exploitation of workers in both the formal and informal economy, leading to large-scale working-class mobilizations against the colonial state after the war during a period of Egyptian nationalist organizing.
In the wake of the riots, British colonial administrators launched a new town planning scheme in Alexandria that mapped class relations onto the urban landscape. Middle class enclaves were created in the form of suburbs, parks, public gardens, theaters, and sporting arenas, and an emphasis was placed on increasing spatial visibility through the construction of wider streets and avenues. Through an analysis of the role of both local actors and colonial administrators in the processes of urbanization and suburbanization, this paper engages with the work of critical geographers such as David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre to theorize the relationship between the production of space and social formation in early interwar Alexandria. Using a combination of legal proceedings, statistics, media reports and the 1921 Alexandria town planning scheme, this paper bridges the gap between a bottom-up and top-down analysis of class formation by theorizing it as a simultaneously socioeconomic, political and spatial process guided by both local and colonial interests.
Although historians often trace the Egyptianization of Alexandria to the nationalization policies of Gamal Abdel Nasser, consular records documenting the expulsion of ‘undesirables’ in the interwar period suggests that the Egyptianization of Alexandria began decades before the Nasser period through nationalist control of subaltern bodies rather than elite property. Policing gender and sexual performances in Alexandria became integral to the nationalist project of constructing and policing territorial borders. At the same time, the transnational conceptions of criminality that gave rise to these policies challenges the juxtaposition of the national and the global, highlighting the way in which the nationalization of working-class bodies through the imposition of anti-vice measures was central to both the Egyptian nationalist project as well as the making of an international political order.
Books by Nefertiti Takla
Book Reviews by Nefertiti Takla
After the war, the colonial state in Egypt moved away from a centralized wartime economy by gradually removing price controls and trade restrictions. The reintegration of Alexandria into the world economy in the early interwar era resulted in a sudden influx of foreign goods and populations, a surge in the circulation and price of gold, and rapid inflation. This paper will argue that this trade and economic liberalization empowered large businesses and the colonial bourgeoisie, leading to the growth of the formal economy and harming local producers and traders in Alexandria. The deregulation of the formal economy after the war was further accompanied by state policies designed to regulate the informal economy, including frequent police raids on clandestine brothels, harsher penalties against merchants involved in illicit trade, and new tariffs on local fishermen. This paper will explore the ways in which the colonial state’s attempts to formalize the economy and reintegrate Alexandria into a capitalist world system resulted in the growing exploitation of workers in both the formal and informal economy, leading to large-scale working-class mobilizations against the colonial state after the war during a period of Egyptian nationalist organizing.
In the wake of the riots, British colonial administrators launched a new town planning scheme in Alexandria that mapped class relations onto the urban landscape. Middle class enclaves were created in the form of suburbs, parks, public gardens, theaters, and sporting arenas, and an emphasis was placed on increasing spatial visibility through the construction of wider streets and avenues. Through an analysis of the role of both local actors and colonial administrators in the processes of urbanization and suburbanization, this paper engages with the work of critical geographers such as David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre to theorize the relationship between the production of space and social formation in early interwar Alexandria. Using a combination of legal proceedings, statistics, media reports and the 1921 Alexandria town planning scheme, this paper bridges the gap between a bottom-up and top-down analysis of class formation by theorizing it as a simultaneously socioeconomic, political and spatial process guided by both local and colonial interests.
Although historians often trace the Egyptianization of Alexandria to the nationalization policies of Gamal Abdel Nasser, consular records documenting the expulsion of ‘undesirables’ in the interwar period suggests that the Egyptianization of Alexandria began decades before the Nasser period through nationalist control of subaltern bodies rather than elite property. Policing gender and sexual performances in Alexandria became integral to the nationalist project of constructing and policing territorial borders. At the same time, the transnational conceptions of criminality that gave rise to these policies challenges the juxtaposition of the national and the global, highlighting the way in which the nationalization of working-class bodies through the imposition of anti-vice measures was central to both the Egyptian nationalist project as well as the making of an international political order.