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Finding a Platform: Studying the Copts in the 19th and 20th Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 July 2010

Nelly van Doorn-Harder*
Affiliation:
Islamic Studies, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, N.C.; e-mail: vandoopa@wfu.edu

Extract

Research on the Copts of Egypt has developed especially rapidly in new directions during the past twenty years. Having started as a corollary of Egyptology, it is advancing from the study of the early Christian centuries to include medieval, early modern, and contemporary Coptic Studies. Concurrently, Coptic issues are being inserted into studies of Egypt in general. Publications on the 19th century mostly ignored Copts, but they were given stereotypical cameo appearances in the prolific research on the profound transformations in 20th-century Egyptian society.

Type
Roundtable
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

NOTES

1 Botros, Ghada, “Religious Identity as an Historical Narrative: Coptic Orthodox Immigrant Churches and the Representation of History,” Journal of Historical Sociology 19, June (2006): 180CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Cannell, Fenella, ed., The Anthropology of Christianity (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006), 17CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Paul Sedra, “Textbook Maneuvers: Evangelicals and Educational Reform in Nineteenth-Century Egypt” (PhD diss., New York University, 2006); idem, “Class Cleavages and Ethnic Conflict: Coptic Christian Communities in Modern Egyptian Politics,” Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 10 (1999): 219–35; idem, “Ecclesiastical Warfare: Patriarch, Presbyterian, and Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Asyut,” http://128.36.236.77/workpaper/pdfs/MESV5-10.pdf (accessed 30 March 2010); idem, “John Lieder and His Mission in Egypt: The Evangelical Ethos at Work among the Nineteenth-Century Copts,” Journal of Religious History 28, October (2004): 219–39. While much of Magdi Guirguis' work is in Arabic, some of his articles have appeared in English; for example, see “The Financial Resources of Coptic Priests in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in Money, Land and Trade. An Economic History of the Muslim Mediterranean, ed. Nelly Hannah (London/New York: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 223–43.

4 Ibrahim, Vivian, The Copts of Egypt: The Challenges of Modernisation and Identity (London: I. B. Tauris, 2010)Google Scholar.

5 Wakin, A Lonely Minority: The Modern Story of Egypt's Copts (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1963), republished in 2000 by Backinprint.com.

6 Nora Stene, “‘Engler i platåsko.’ Religiøs sosialisering av koptisk-ortodokse barn i London” (“Angels in Platform Shoes”: Religious Socialization of Coptic Orthodox Children in London) (PhD diss., Institute for Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, 2005); idem, “The Challenge of the Diaspora as Reflected in a Coptic Sunday School,” Journal of Eastern Christian Studies 54 (2002): 77–90; idem, “Into the Land of Immigration,” in Between Desert and City, The Coptic Orthodox Church Today, ed. Kari Vogt and Nelly van Doorn-Harder (Oslo: Novus Vorlag & Portland, Ore.: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1997).

7 Ghada Botros, “Competing for the Future: Adaptation and the Accommodation of Difference in Coptic Immigrant Churches” (PhD diss., University of Toronto, 2005).

8 Hasan, S. S., Christians versus Muslims in Modern Egypt: The Century-Long Struggle for Coptic Equality (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003)Google Scholar.

9 Elizabeth Edwards Oram, “Constructing Modern Copts: The Production of Coptic Christian Identity in Contemporary Egypt” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2004).

10 Idem, “In the Footsteps of the Saints: The Monastery of St. Antony, Pilgrimage, and Modern Coptic Identity,” in Monastic Visions: Wall Paintings in the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea, ed. Elizabeth S. Bolman (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002), 203–16. Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen's “The Coptic Mouleds: Evolution of the Traditional Pilgrimages,” in Between Desert and City, ed. Vogt and van Doorn-Harder, 212–29, presents similar arguments to those of Oram.

11 Tadros, Mariz, “Vicissitudes in the Entente between the Coptic Orthodox Church and the State in Egypt (1952–2007), International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009): 269–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Noteworthy in this context is Dina el Khawaga's work based on her unpublished dissertation, “Le Renouveau Copte: La Communauté comme Acteur Politique” (PhD diss., Institut D'Etude Politique de Paris, 1993).

12 Reiss, Wolfram, Erneuerung in der Koptisch-Orthodoxen Kirche. Die Geschichte der koptisch-orthodoxen Sonntagschulbewegung und die Aufnahme ihere Reformsätze in den Erneuerungsbewegungen der Koptisch-Orthodoxen Kirche der Gegenwart (Hamburg, Germany: Lit Verlag, 1998)Google Scholar.

13 Thorbjornsrud, Berit, Controlling the Body to Liberate the Soul: Towards an Analysis of the Coptic Orthodox Concept of the Body (Oslo: Unipub forlag/Akademika AS, 1999)Google Scholar; idem, “Born in the Wrong Age; Coptic Women in a Changing Society,” in Between Desert and City, ed. Vogt and van Doorn-Harder, 167–89. Armanios, Febe, “The ‘Virtuous Woman’: Images of Gender in Modern Coptic Society,” Middle Eastern Studies 38 (2002): 110–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Angie Deborah Heo, “Technologies of Intercessory Power: Images and Movement among the Coptic Orthodox of Contemporary Egypt” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2008). Voile, Brigitte, Les Coptes d'Egypte sous Nasser. Sainteté, miracles, apparitions (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 van Doorn-Harder, Nelly, “Coptic Women Re-Shaping the Visual Culture,” in O Ye Gentlemen: Arabic Studies on Science and Literary Culture, Festschrift in Honor of Remke Kruk, ed. Vrolijk, Arnoud and Hogendijk, Jan P. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2007), 511–26Google Scholar; idem, “Re-Creating Saintly Women: Gender and Coptic Spirituality,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Coptic Studies, ed. Mariam Ayad (Stevenage, U.K.: n.p., forthcoming).