Lucia Carminati
University of Oslo, Archaeology, Conservation and History, Faculty Member
- I am associate professor at the Institute for Archeology, Conservation and History (IAKH) of the University of Oslo. ... moreI am associate professor at the Institute for Archeology, Conservation and History (IAKH) of the University of Oslo. Previously assistant professor at the History department of Texas Tech University, I was a Polonsky Postdoctoral Fellow at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute between 2018 and 2020. I completed my Ph.D. at the History Department of the University of Arizona in August 2018. My first book, titled "Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Migrant Labor and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906," traces the social and cultural history of Port Said’s urban beginnings at the intersection of migratory routes, imperial interests, and infrastructural transformations. My research projects include studies of the history of public health on the Suez Isthmus; a historical analysis of migrants’ correspondence; an inquiry into the history of women and gender in and around the Suez Canal area.
My research has received support from the Fulbright Commission, the University of Arizona, the Social Science Research Council, the Mellon Foundation with the Council for Library and Information Resources, the Zeit Foundation, and the Coordinating Council for Women Historians with the Berkshire Conference.edit
EXTRACT: A joke appearing in the folds of a Cairo-based newspaper published in Italian in 1895 must have fallen flat with Port Said's inhabitants. But the irony was not amiss. The jest suggested that the town, whose toponym could be... more
EXTRACT: A joke appearing in the folds of a Cairo-based newspaper published in Italian in 1895 must have fallen flat with Port Said's inhabitants. But the irony was not amiss. The jest suggested that the town, whose toponym could be translated to “happy port” given the Arabic meaning of saʿīd, ought to be renamed “unhappy” due to the sad state of its public services. Readers may have smiled mirthlessly in agreement with the author, who claimed the Egyptian government treated the city “as if it were less than a village.” Many were under the impression that Cairo wanted to scrap this “unhappy happy port” from the rest of Egypt. Continuing the wordplay, British journalist George Warrington Steevens wrote in 1898 that Port Said “would be wonderful if it were not unhappy,” stuck as it was between its riotous past and its doubtfully industrious future. Puns based on Port Said's name must have circulated for a while. Already in 1875, a French author had ironically remarked that this town's auspicious name seemed quite unjustified.
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Today, nearly 30% of all global ship traffic passes through the Suez Canal, totaling over 20,000 ships in 2021. The site of the canal had been of interest to rulers as far back as the second millennium BCE, but plans to construct a... more
Today, nearly 30% of all global ship traffic passes through the Suez Canal, totaling over 20,000 ships in 2021. The site of the canal had been of interest to rulers as far back as the second millennium BCE, but plans to construct a passageway were obstructed by cost, political strife, and the ever-shifting sands— until the 19th century. Lucia Carminati details the creation of the Suez Canal.
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“They say the city never sleeps, they say it bursts at the seams. The city rotates and revolves. The city branches out. The city beats, the city bleeds.” This unnamed city is Cairo, Umm al-Dunya or “mother of the world,” at once a vibrant... more
“They say the city never sleeps, they say it bursts at the seams. The city rotates and revolves. The city branches out. The city beats, the city bleeds.” This unnamed city is Cairo, Umm al-Dunya or “mother of the world,” at once a vibrant character and the pulsating backdrop of Ahmed Naji's scandal-rousing Istikhdam al-Hayat (Using Life) and countless other works in Egyptian literature. Cairo, Amitav Ghosh has argued in his autobiographical chronicle of historical research and anthropological fieldwork in the Egyptian Delta in 1980 and beyond, is “Egypt's own metaphor for itself.” If that is the case, what does this sprawling and pervasive synecdoche reveal and what does it obscure?
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Since its excavation took off in 1859 in Ottoman-Egyptian territory, the Suez Canal has conveyed much more than armies or cargoes. This essay dives into the currents and stoppages in the historiography of the Suez Canal and its brand-new... more
Since its excavation took off in 1859 in Ottoman-Egyptian territory, the Suez Canal has conveyed much more than armies or cargoes. This essay dives into the currents and stoppages in the historiography of the Suez Canal and its brand-new cities between 1859, when the project began, and 1956, when the Egyptian government nationalized this waterway. Writings on the 19th and early 20th-century history of the Suez Canal have followed a course of their own, quite divergent from mainstream historical scholarship on modern Egypt. The Suez Canal has funneled political aspirations ranging from the colonial to the semi-colonial and the nationalist, ideas on its built environment, utopias about a cosmopolitan society, and experiences of actual social dystopias. This essay suggests that scholars need to pay attention to labor and migration in order to people the history of the Suez Canal and its surrounding region, for this waterway not to remain the hollow ditch it has been so far in most of its pre-1956 historiography.
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This guide accompanies the following article: Carminati L. Suez: A hollow canal in need of peopling. Currents and stoppages in the historiography, 1859–1956. History Compass (2021): e12650, https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12650
In April 1859, one hundred and fifty laborers gathered on Egypt’s northern shore. When pickaxes first hit the land to be parted from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, not only was the Suez Canal initiated, but the coastal city of Port... more
In April 1859, one hundred and fifty laborers gathered on Egypt’s northern shore. When pickaxes first hit the land to be parted from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, not only was the Suez Canal initiated, but the coastal city of Port Said was also born. Two more cities, Ismailia (1862) and Port Tewfik (1867), were later founded along the waterway. This article analyzes the ways in which the environment of the isthmus of Suez changed upon the digging of the canal as well as the ideas that germinated around such changes. By relying on published memoirs, travel accounts, and archival documents, I explore how Western contemporaries viewed the isthmus desert and constructed narratives around the urbanization and the peopling of the area. I argue that they sanctioned the myth that Western initiative alone could transform the isthmus sands into flower gardens, thus disregarding realities on the ground.
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Only apparently a house, a domicile, an address, the Archive has never been a neutral place. As social theorists have argued at length, not only do archives dutifully collect and safeguard (certain fragments of) the past but they also... more
Only apparently a house, a domicile, an address, the Archive has never been a neutral place. As social theorists have argued at length, not only do archives dutifully collect and safeguard (certain fragments of) the past but they also produce what can be enunciated. They shape the historically thinkable and the politically utterable. But not all are welcome in such dwellings. In this article, I argue that Dār al Wathā’iq al Qawmiyya, the Egyptian National Archive, functions as a microcosm of today’s Egypt and circumscribes the questions that historians as well as the public are allowed to ask. In ethnographic form, I explore the practices that regulate who is allowed into Dār al Wathā’iq, what can be accessed once the researcher sets foot past its door, and how such archival experience unfolds. I claim that the archive itself can morph into a locale of every-day surveillance and arbitrariness. Archival fieldwork is not an impartial practice. It should be acknowledged as such given the peculiar challenges and possibilities with which it confronts researchers as they stumble along in and out of the archives.
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In October 1898, the Italian vice-consul in Alexandria charged a group of Italians with participating in an anarchist plot to attack German Emperor Wilhelm II during his planned tour through Egypt and Palestine. This collective arrest... more
In October 1898, the Italian vice-consul in Alexandria charged a group of Italians with participating in an anarchist plot to attack German Emperor Wilhelm II during his planned tour through Egypt and Palestine. This collective arrest produced unexpected outcomes, left a trail of multi-lingual documents, and illuminated specific forms of late nineteenth-century Mediterranean migration. Anarchists were among those who frequently crossed borders and they were well aware of and connected to what was happening elsewhere: they sent letters, circulated manifestos, raised and transported money, and helped fugitive comrades. They maintained nodes of subversion and moved along circuits of solidarity. Similarly, diplomats of Europe, Cairo, Istanbul, and local consular officials operated across borders and cooperated to hunt anarchists down. By following people who were on the move on boats, in post offices, and in taverns, I make a methodological and historiographical argument. First, I examine the Mediterranean as a space of flows and show how the Maghreb/Mashreq divide in Middle Eastern history has concealed webs and connections. Because anarchists and authorities acted on multiple fronts simultaneously, so must scholarship of this part of the world take account of several histories at once. Second, I look beyond the micro-macro binary to emphasize the interconnections and mutual implications of the micro, the macro, and everything in between. I highlight competing, intersecting, and even contradictory trajectories of some of these anarchist migrants’ belonging. As the affair of the bombs unfolded, all of these contradictions and scales of analysis became visible at once.
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Zaynab al-Ghazālī (1917-2005) is regarded as a pioneering figure in the field of women’s preaching and religious teaching in Egypt. Her story, however, remains largely undocumented. In Western scholarship, al-Ghazālī has often been... more
Zaynab al-Ghazālī (1917-2005) is regarded as a pioneering figure in the field of women’s preaching and religious teaching in Egypt. Her story, however, remains largely undocumented. In Western scholarship, al-Ghazālī has often been framed in terms of a contradictory figure, whose own choices flagrantly undercut her statements on the role of women in Islamic society. Trying to go beyond this type of appraisal, her writings are analyzed in order to question whether or not Zaynab al-Ghazālī’s intellectual genealogy should be understood within the context of her considerable exposure to a well-developed discourse of women’s rights at the turn of the twentieth century. Indeed, she made available to Muslim women a particular field of arguments, while foreclosing for them certain possibilities for action. Overall, her statements and choices in life need to be read as a function of her historical and geographical context and her positioning needs to be framed within the consciousness on the role women had come to play in the public domain.
Baron, Beth, Jeffrey Culang, Beth Baron, and Jeffrey Culang, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Egyptian History. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. Book description: Until relatively recently, scholars... more
Baron, Beth, Jeffrey Culang, Beth Baron, and Jeffrey Culang, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Egyptian History. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2024.
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Until relatively recently, scholars of Egyptian history understood the modern period to begin with the movement of European people and ideas to Egypt's northern shores precipitated by Napoleon's invasion in 1798. From this perspective, modern Egyptian history was defined by the diverse and sometimes contradictory ways in which Egyptians responded over time to colonial power and modern forms of knowledge. This handbook, featuring twenty-five originally commissioned essays by leading scholars in the field plus an introduction, adds to a growing literature that complicates the facile colonizer/ colonized and modern/tradition binaries undergirding this view. It shows modern Egyptian history to be a continuous process of translation and adaptation, invention and reinvention. The handbook is intended to map this dynamic and influential field, highlighting the most promising avenues of research and laying new ground upon which future generations of scholars may build. The contributors address both long-persisting themes, though in new ways, and new themes reshaping how we understand modern Egyptian history, and thus Middle Eastern and global history. These include culture, disease, environment, family, infrastructure, intellectuals, labor, law, literature, medicine, mobility, politics, the state, and technology. The historical questions explored in the handbook touch on many of today's most pressing global concerns and debates.
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Until relatively recently, scholars of Egyptian history understood the modern period to begin with the movement of European people and ideas to Egypt's northern shores precipitated by Napoleon's invasion in 1798. From this perspective, modern Egyptian history was defined by the diverse and sometimes contradictory ways in which Egyptians responded over time to colonial power and modern forms of knowledge. This handbook, featuring twenty-five originally commissioned essays by leading scholars in the field plus an introduction, adds to a growing literature that complicates the facile colonizer/ colonized and modern/tradition binaries undergirding this view. It shows modern Egyptian history to be a continuous process of translation and adaptation, invention and reinvention. The handbook is intended to map this dynamic and influential field, highlighting the most promising avenues of research and laying new ground upon which future generations of scholars may build. The contributors address both long-persisting themes, though in new ways, and new themes reshaping how we understand modern Egyptian history, and thus Middle Eastern and global history. These include culture, disease, environment, family, infrastructure, intellectuals, labor, law, literature, medicine, mobility, politics, the state, and technology. The historical questions explored in the handbook touch on many of today's most pressing global concerns and debates.
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Edited by Enrico Ferraris, 94-99. Modena: Cosimo Panini Editore.
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VOLUME ABSTRACT: Over the last years, we have witnessed a renewal in the studies on the Italian community which formed in Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contrary to the historiographical paradigm that remained dominant... more
VOLUME ABSTRACT: Over the last years, we have witnessed a renewal in the studies on the Italian community which formed in Egypt in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contrary to the historiographical paradigm that remained dominant for over a century, a novel approach-essentially based on a less ideological interpretation of archival sources-tends to provide a much more complex, less apologetic, and more horizontal reading of the dynamics within and among foreign/migrant communities. This work belongs to this "new" research wave. By rediscovering the originally Gramscian concept of "subaltern classes", it aims at re-centring the context in which the "subalterns" of Italian origin lived and acted as the focus of our interest. At once, it aims at both making such context relevant and disclosing its complexity. It privileges an approach that takes into account different and overlapping categories and social identities, with particular attention to the relationships with the many different local communities.
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After its foundation in 1859 as the northern harbor of the Suez Canal in the making, nowhere on maps could newly-minted Būr Saʿīd (Port Said) be found. Yet, the Egyptian port-city grew quickly. By 1865, its inhabitants were estimated at... more
After its foundation in 1859 as the northern harbor of the Suez Canal in the making, nowhere on maps could newly-minted Būr Saʿīd (Port Said) be found. Yet, the Egyptian port-city grew quickly. By 1865, its inhabitants were estimated at 7,000. They came from the rest of Egypt and from European countries, Mediterranean islands, and Ottoman lands. In the end of 1869, all the Canal works were concluded and the inhabitants of the city reached the number of 10,000. From the onset, Port Said’s urban plans mandated that its dwellers be divided and assigned to different parts of town. By laboring to delineate “Arab” versus “European,” “modern” versus “traditional,” and “public” versus “private” urban spaces, authorities in Port Said attempted to circumscribe and isolate specific groups of the urban population. They turned supposedly inherent ethnic, racial, and occupational characteristics into means of control. In spite of Port Said’s physical segregation and intangible boundaries, however, the city’s inhabitants constantly crossed the multiple boundaries inscribed in its urban layout.
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Was abolitionism an "intellectualist utopia”? Or would regulations rather curb the flourishing of prostitution? Between 1928 and 1936, Italian authorities participate into an ongoing domestic and international debate. They consider,... more
Was abolitionism an "intellectualist utopia”? Or would regulations rather curb the flourishing of prostitution? Between 1928 and 1936, Italian authorities participate into an ongoing domestic and international debate. They consider, examine, frame legally, and deliberate the problem of trafficking in women and children at home and abroad. Presenting a remarkable diversity in its composition, this ensemble of documents offers students and scholars of gender, childhood, empire, and international law unique perspectives on the Italian state’s regulatory reach.
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Digital Editor: Ozayr Patel The Suez Canal was in the spotlight recently when the container vessel Ever Given became wedged diagonally across it, causing a massive backlog in shipping traffic. The idea of a canal connecting the Red Sea... more
Digital Editor: Ozayr Patel
The Suez Canal was in the spotlight recently when the container vessel Ever Given became wedged diagonally across it, causing a massive backlog in shipping traffic. The idea of a canal connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean was a dream for many throughout history. The Egyptian Pharoahs, Persians, Romans and Ottomans all saw its potential benefits.
The canal offers the shortest sea route between Europe and Asia, making it useful for trade. Eventually a French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps, was given permission by Egypt’s ruler to start working on the project in 1854. Construction started in the north and proceeded southwards, creating a hive of economic activity.
In today’s episode of Pasha, Lucia Carminati, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, takes us through the fascinating history of the Suez Canal, including the workers who executed the project and the physical challenges of developing and maintaining it.
The Suez Canal was in the spotlight recently when the container vessel Ever Given became wedged diagonally across it, causing a massive backlog in shipping traffic. The idea of a canal connecting the Red Sea and the Mediterranean was a dream for many throughout history. The Egyptian Pharoahs, Persians, Romans and Ottomans all saw its potential benefits.
The canal offers the shortest sea route between Europe and Asia, making it useful for trade. Eventually a French diplomat, Ferdinand de Lesseps, was given permission by Egypt’s ruler to start working on the project in 1854. Construction started in the north and proceeded southwards, creating a hive of economic activity.
In today’s episode of Pasha, Lucia Carminati, an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, takes us through the fascinating history of the Suez Canal, including the workers who executed the project and the physical challenges of developing and maintaining it.
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Presenter/Producer: Annabelle Quince The Suez Canal is one of the world’s most vital trade routes. It’s the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe and about 12% of global trade passes through it each year. But the Canal is situated in... more
Presenter/Producer: Annabelle Quince
The Suez Canal is one of the world’s most vital trade routes. It’s the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe and about 12% of global trade passes through it each year. But the Canal is situated in one of the most volatile regions in the world and its history has been defined by that geography.
Duration: 29min 6sec
Broadcast: Sun 25 Apr 2021, 12:05pm
Guests
Dr Lucia Carminati
Social and cultural historian of modern Middle East and an assistant professor at Texas Tech University. Author of Suez: A hollow canal in need of peopling. Currents and stoppages in the historiography, 1859-1956.
Mohamed Gamal-Eldin
Historian of Modern Egypt specialising in architecture and social history - including the Suez Canal cities from 1856 to 1936.
Zachary Karabell
Author of Parting the desert: the creation of the Suez Canal.
The Suez Canal is one of the world’s most vital trade routes. It’s the shortest sea link between Asia and Europe and about 12% of global trade passes through it each year. But the Canal is situated in one of the most volatile regions in the world and its history has been defined by that geography.
Duration: 29min 6sec
Broadcast: Sun 25 Apr 2021, 12:05pm
Guests
Dr Lucia Carminati
Social and cultural historian of modern Middle East and an assistant professor at Texas Tech University. Author of Suez: A hollow canal in need of peopling. Currents and stoppages in the historiography, 1859-1956.
Mohamed Gamal-Eldin
Historian of Modern Egypt specialising in architecture and social history - including the Suez Canal cities from 1856 to 1936.
Zachary Karabell
Author of Parting the desert: the creation of the Suez Canal.
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Who are child and youth migrants? Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy classify migration as "any change of residence…that takes place outside of the space of a given community…whether it is temporary or permanent." This definition encompasses... more
Who are child and youth migrants? Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy classify migration as "any change of residence…that takes place outside of the space of a given community…whether it is temporary or permanent." This definition encompasses internal and international migration, family migration, labor migration, adoption, displacement, enslavement, trafficking, "child rescuing," and participation in educational programs, philanthropic trips, or international competitions. Despite the range of migrations in which young people participate, a simple internet search for "children, migration, and Middle East" yields results almost exclusively associated with forced displacement. Certainly, children are represented disproportionately in displaced populations. Individuals under the age of 18 comprise nearly forty percent of the global refugee population, and one in three children living outside their country of birth are refugees. Nevertheless, children have participated in migration within and outside MENA for a number of reasons and in a variety of conditions. Exclusive focus on displacement flattens the diversity of young migrants' experiences, casts young MENA migrants primarily as victims, and contributes to the racialization of families and children in the history of their journeys within and outside the MENA region.
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https://www.sesamoitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/8.-Carminati-Montalbano-_-Open-Panel.pdf University of Cagliari, 3-5 October 2024: XVI SeSaMO Conference titled "Crossings and contaminations. Practices, languages and politics in... more
https://www.sesamoitalia.it/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/8.-Carminati-Montalbano-_-Open-Panel.pdf
University of Cagliari, 3-5 October 2024: XVI SeSaMO Conference titled "Crossings and contaminations. Practices, languages and politics in transit in the Middle East and North Africa" - Wonderful Gabriele Montalbano and I have organized the open panel "Urban history of mobility in MENA region: migrations, ecologies, spaces, temporalities (XIX-XXI)" ~ Consider joining & spreading the word! Submission is open until 7 May 2024
University of Cagliari, 3-5 October 2024: XVI SeSaMO Conference titled "Crossings and contaminations. Practices, languages and politics in transit in the Middle East and North Africa" - Wonderful Gabriele Montalbano and I have organized the open panel "Urban history of mobility in MENA region: migrations, ecologies, spaces, temporalities (XIX-XXI)" ~ Consider joining & spreading the word! Submission is open until 7 May 2024
Who are child and youth migrants? Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy classify migration as "any change of residence…that takes place outside of the space of a given community…whether it is temporary or permanent." This definition encompasses... more
Who are child and youth migrants? Marie Rodet and Elodie Razy classify migration as "any change of residence…that takes place outside of the space of a given community…whether it is temporary or permanent." This definition encompasses internal and international migration, family migration, labor migration, adoption, displacement, enslavement, trafficking, "child rescuing," and participation in educational programs, philanthropic trips, or international competitions. Despite the range of migrations in which young people participate, a simple internet search for "children, migration, and Middle East" yields results almost exclusively associated with forced displacement. Certainly, children are represented disproportionately in displaced populations. Individuals under the age of 18 comprise nearly forty percent of the global refugee population, and one in three children living outside their country of birth are refugees. Nevertheless, children have participated in migration within and outside MENA for a number of reasons and in a variety of conditions. Exclusive focus on displacement flattens the diversity of young migrants' experiences, casts young MENA migrants primarily as victims, and contributes to the racialization of families and children in the history of their journeys within and outside the MENA region.
This special issue (with guest editors Dr. Ella Fratantuono and Dr. Lucia Carminati) thus seeks to juxtapose varied experiences of and perspectives on young people’s migration in the history of the Middle East and North Africa. We welcome contributions including, but not limited to, scholarly
articles as well as works of visual and/or audio art and literature.
This special issue (with guest editors Dr. Ella Fratantuono and Dr. Lucia Carminati) thus seeks to juxtapose varied experiences of and perspectives on young people’s migration in the history of the Middle East and North Africa. We welcome contributions including, but not limited to, scholarly
articles as well as works of visual and/or audio art and literature.
Research Interests:
Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said probes migrant labor's role in shaping the history of the Suez Canal and modern Egypt. It maps the everyday life of Port Said's residents between 1859, when the town was founded as the Suez Canal's... more
Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said probes migrant labor's role in shaping the history of the Suez Canal and modern Egypt. It maps the everyday life of Port Said's residents between 1859, when the town was founded as the Suez Canal's northern harbor, and 1906, when a railway connected it to the rest of Egypt. Through groundbreaking research, Lucia Carminati provides a ground-level perspective on the key processes touching late nineteenth-century Egypt: heightened domestic mobility and immigration, intensified urbanization, changing urban governance, and growing foreign encroachment. By privileging migrants' prosaic lives, Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said shows how unevenness and inequality laid the groundwork for the Suez Canal's making.