Cross-posted from Chris Rose’s blog, where he regularly tells us Important and Useful Things and makes us laugh along the way. In addition to his many other accomplishments, Chris is the brains and motor behind our podcast, 15 Minute History. By Christopher Rose Over the weekend, the Thomas Cook company went bankrupt and shuttered operations, leaving hundreds of […]
2019 History PhDs on Not Even Past
This month on Not Even Past we are celebrating the accomplishments of seventeen students who completed their doctoral dissertations and received their PhDs in History in 2018-2019. Above you see some of them pictured. Below you will find each of their names and the title of their dissertations. Many of these students were also contributors […]
Wrong About Everything
by Christopher Rose Originally posted on Christopher Rose’s blog on April 12, 2018. I know, not the best title for my first blog entry, right? A couple of months back, I presented some of initial findings on epidemic and epizootic disease in Egypt during the first World War at a symposium. (Ok, I’ll tell you […]
Mapping & Microbes: The New Archive (No. 22)
by Christopher Rose Can the microbe speak? It’s 5:30 pm, and I’ve been staring at my computer screen for over eight hours. There’s a crick in my neck, my breathing is shallow, my blood pressure has elevated, and the entire Giza governorate has just disappeared off of the map the instant that I finished tracing […]
Industrial Sexuality: Gender in a Small Town in Egypt
Our featured author this month, Hanan Hammad, received her PhD in History at UT Austin in 2009. She is now Assistant Professor of History at Texas Christian University and we are proud to introduce you to her excellent new book. by Hanan Hammad Millions of Egyptian men, women, and children first experienced industrial work, urban […]
A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks, by Stewart Gordon (2015)
By Cynthia Talbot The world’s attention was captured in 2012 by the disaster that befell the Costa Concordia, a cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Italy leading to 32 deaths. This shipwreck is the most recent one covered in A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks, whose expansive gaze covers much of […]
Che in Gaza: Searching for the Story Behind the Image
On June 18th 1959, dressed in full army fatigues and accompanied by several comrades exhibiting an equally imposing revolutionary appearance, Che Guevara landed in Gaza.
Visitors of the Nile: The New Archive (No. 13)
by Charley Binkow For centuries Egypt has inspired awe in the West. From Napoleon to Anderson Cooper, westerners have found an intrinsic fascination with Egypt’s rich culture, history, art, and politics. Since they first arrived, Egypt’s visitors have tried to capture its incredible landscape and document its complex beauty. The Travelers in the Middle East […]
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswany (2006)
Alaa al-Aswany’s novel The Yacoubian Building (2002, Arabic عمارة يعقوبيان) tells the story of a group of people loosely bound together by dint of living in the same crumbling building – a real place – in downtown Cairo.
Ordinary Egyptians: Creating The Modern Nation Through Popular Culture by Ziad Fahmy (2011)
On June 8, 2010 an Egyptian Google executive based in Dubai, named Wael Ghonim, was stunned by a YouTube video that featured a fellow citizen by the name of Khaled Said, bloodied and disfigured. It turned out that the Egyptian police had beaten Said to death and mutilated his body. Appalled by this short video that ran viral through Arab social media, Wael Ghonim created a Facebook page that came to symbolize the involvement of ordinary people in creating change.