Hoda Elsadda

Hoda Elsadda is Chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Manchester. She serves as Co-Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) in the UK, Associate Editor of the Online Edition of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women, member of the Advisory Board of the Durham Modern Languages Series, and Core Group Member of the Arab Families Working Group. Elsadda is also the Co-founder and current Chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Women and Memory Forum.

She has previously held the position of Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Faculty of Arts at Cairo University. She is a former member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES), the Advisory Committee for the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue Between Cultures, a former member of the National Council for Human Rights in Egypt, a former board member of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights and a former member of the Core Team of the Arab Human Development Report. In 1992, she co-founded and co-edited Hagar, an interdisciplinary journal in women's studies published in Arabic. She has written articles and edited books dealing with discourses on gender in modern Arab history, particularly in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Her research focuses on gender and culture in the Middle East, Arab women's writing, oral histories, women’s creative writing, comparative literature, and Arabic literature and popular culture.

Education

• B.A. English, Cairo University
• M.A. English and Comparative Literature, American University in Cairo
• Ph.D. English Literature, Cairo University

Women and Memory Forum

Elsadda co-founded the Women and Memory Forum (WMF) in 1996. WMF consists of a group of women scholars, researchers, and activists who strive to produce and disseminate alternative cultural knowledge of women in Arab cultures throughout history and in contemporary society. The group advocates for the promotion of gender as an analytical framework to help combat negative stereotypes of Arab women in the cultural sphere. According to their website, “The long-term objective of WMF's specialized research is to produce and make available alternative cultural information about Arab women that can be used for raising awareness and empowering women.”

Selected publications

Books

• Sadda, Hoda; et al. (2002). Madkhal ila qadaya al-mar'a fi sutur wa suwar [A beginner's guide to women's issues] (in Arabic). Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum.
• Sadda, Hoda (2012). Gender, nation, and the Arabic novel: Egypt, 1892-2008. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815632962.

Edited Books

• Sadda, Hoda; et al. (1998). Zaman al-Nisa' wa al-Dhakira al-Badila [Women's Time and Alternate Memory] (in Arabic). Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum.
• Sadda, Hoda (2001). Min Ra'idat al-Qarn al-'Ishriyn: Shakhsiyat wa Qadaya [Women Pioneers of the Twentieth Century: Critical Essays] (in Arabic). Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum.
• Sadda, Hoda (2004). 'A'isha Taymur: tahadiyyat al-thabit wal mutaghayir fil qarn al tasi' 'ashar [Aisha Taymur: Challenges of Change and Continuity in the Nineteenth Century] (in Arabic). Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum.
• Sadda, Hoda (2007). Al-Fatah li Sahibatiha Hind Nawfal 1892-1892 (in Arabic). Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum.
• Sadda, Hoda (2010). 'Intaj al-Ma'rifa 'an al-'Alam al-'Arabi [Mapping the Production of Knowledge on the Arab World. Proceedings of a conference held in Cairo in July 2007] (in Arabic). Cairo: The Supreme Council of Culture.

Articles

• Sada, Huda (1999). "al-Mar'a wa al-Thakira: Hoda Elsadda Muqabala" [Women and memory (an interview with Hoda Elsadda)]. Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics (19): 210–230. doi:10.2307/521935. JSTOR 521935.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Elsadda, Hoda (2006). "Gendered citizenship: discourses on domesticity in the second half of the nineteenth century". Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World. 4 (1): 1–28. doi:10.1163/156920806777504562.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Elsadda, Hoda (Spring 2007). "Imaging the "new man": gender and nation in Arab literary narratives in the early twentieth century". Journal of Middle East Women's Studies. 3 (2): 31–55. doi:10.2979/mew.2007.3.2.31. JSTOR 10.2979/mew.2007.3.2.31.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Elsadda, Hoda (2008), "Egypt", in Ashour, Radwa; Ghazoul, Ferial J.; Reda-Mekdashi, Hasna (eds.), Arab women writers a critical reference guide, 1873-1999, Mandy McClure (translator), Cairo, Egypt: American University in Cairo Press, pp. 98–161, ISBN 9789774161469.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Elsadda, Hoda; Moghissi, Haideh; Elsadda; Valassopoulos, Anastasia (August 2010). "Dialogue section: Arab feminist research and activism: bridging the gap between the theoretical and the practical". Feminist Theory. 11 (2): 121–127. doi:10.1177/1464700110366803.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Elsadda, Hoda (2010). "Arab women bloggers: the emergence of literary counterpublics". Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication. 3 (3): 312–332. doi:10.1163/187398610X538678.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• Elsadda, Hoda (June 2011). "A 'phantom freedom in a phantom modernity'? Protestant missionaries, domestic ideology and narratives of modernity in an Arab context". Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice. 15 (2): 209–228. doi:10.1080/13642529.2011.564821.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)