Entry 18 - Reflective Essay

I wanted to wait to post this since I wasn't sure how they Library Research Awards committee would take to seeing the same essay I submitted on here but since I am now a proud recipient of the award I thought it would be alright to post it here. In other good news Clio's Purple and Gold, the undergraduate history will be also publishing my paper.

Rewarding Research Requires the Right Resource

A good paper begins with a well-defined question, and since I could only write twelve pages, I constantly thought about how to make my topic more specific. Since my senior historical seminar was about “Gender, Nationalism, and Identity in 20th century Egypt,” I decided to research how Egyptology, the study of Ancient Egypt, affected gender perceptions. I e-mailed my professor about this idea and he suggested using monuments with Pharaonic themes as my primary sources. I liked this idea but realized it would require a lot of background research.

To get started, and help me think about my project along the way, I created a blog called Deir el-Feminina, accessible at http://deirelfeminina.blogspot.com/ . My initial searches on the UW-only catalog used keywords like “Egypt, archaeology, gender” or “Egyptology and gender” and led to the call number DT 61. There I found books on Egyptology, such as Whose Pharaohs? by Donald Reid and Social Life in Ancient Egypt by W.M. Flinders Petrie. I read parts of these works and blogged about them but these were generally academic perspectives and I wanted to explore how non-academics interpreted Egyptology. In order to do that, I visited Mary St. Germain’s subject guide on Near Eastern Studies, through which I accessed Al-Ahram Weekly, an English-language Egyptian newspaper. There I searched the names of particular Ancient Egyptian queens, such as Cleopatra and Nefertari, to look at the presence of ancient women in current news stories. Since many class readings were about gender, I also searched for documents written by Egyptian feminists. I searched the names of feminists mentioned in class readings with the words “works” or “documents” and found memoirs, like Huda Sharaawi’s Harem Years, as well as collections of Muslim feminist writings translated into English such as Opening the Gates. These documents outlined the many issues Egyptian feminists faced through the years, such as female participation in politics and veiling. I also took my professor’s advice and searched for sculptures and paintings with Pharaonic symbols that I could analyze as primary sources.

After three weeks of researching, I wrote an abstract, turned it in for class, and posted it on my blog. My abstract showed the variety of my sources—modern news articles, memoirs, sculptures, and early guidebooks—but also displayed the broadness of my research into feminism and Egyptology. After getting feedback from my professor, I decided to focus my paper on two artists that used Pharaonic themes in their artwork. I chose to do this because it allowed me to utilize my research into Egyptology, overcome a linguistic barrier by using artwork, and, because both artists were most active during the 1920s, it narrowed my research chronologically. My question thus became, “How did Mahmoud Mokhtar and Muhammad Nagi members of the “first generation of Egyptian artists” explore portrayals of women and how did their art intersect with the feminist movement?”

Although this made current feminist issues and news articles obsolete as works to analyze, I used them to explain why my analysis of Mokhtar and Nagi and their Pharaonic imagery was important. However, before writing my rough draft, due just two weeks after my abstract, I needed to find images to analyze and articles about the artists. Biographies and contextual information were easily available through JSTOR or Project MUSE by searching different transliterations—Muhammad Nagi versus Mohamed Nahgi—of the artists’ names. However, I chose to use LC subject headings, rather than keyword searches, in order to avoid transliteration variations in both the artists’ and their artworks names. Headings like “Egypt Art Modern 20th Century” or “Art, Modern -- 20th century” lead me to books, such as Contemporary art in Egypt edited by Hamed Said and Modern Egyptian Art 1910-2003 by Liliane Karnouk, which contained the high quality reproductions I needed to do my analysis. The limitations of the two artists, of Pharaonic symbols, and the use of women allowed me to select four images for analysis with two pieces included in my essay as contrasts.

Those books contained important details about the art but there were still gaps in my research. Contemporary Art in Egypt, which contained Muhammad Nagi’s paintings, did not have dates for the artwork. This contrasted an important interlibrary loan item I had ordered, titled Memory of the Nation: Sculptor Mahmoud Mukhtar & his Museum, 1891-1934, which contained the correct titles and dates for all of Mahmud Mukhtar’s sculptures. Since most information about Muhammad Nagi’s art was in Arabic or French, I contacted Dr. Patrick Kane, the author of “Egyptian Art Institutions and Art Education from 1908 to 1951.” He informed me that “Hairdresser”, a painting that played a major role in my rough draft, was produced outside of the Egyptian context. This meant that I needed edit it out of my draft. While I did lose this primary source, it allowed me to explain the history of the feminist movement in Egypt, which I had not thoroughly discussed.

Researching the use of Pharaonic symbolism in Egyptian art during the 1920s and its relationship to feminist issues made me realize how much information does not go into an academic article. My planned searches found many interesting primary sources but I realized that situating one source in its historical context and discussing it in detail was better than writing a paper that briefly analyzed, or summarized, many sources. I also learned that a combination of searching the online catalogue, browsing call numbers, and looking at bibliographies produced the best sources. For example, browsing in person helped me select Egyptian Gods and Myths and Marguerite Nakhla: Legacy to Modern Egyptian Art, which provided important background on Egyptian mythology and art. While it at first seemed odd to use such diverse sources, this diversity accented the interdisciplinary nature of history and research in general. By doing this project I discovered that research can be about finding sources, no matter how diverse, to answer a specific question as well as trying to ask a question of available sources.