Childhood and Colonial Modernity in Egypt

Heidi Morrison is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, USA. She is the editor of The Global History of Childhood Reader (2012).

'Heidi Morrison's Childhood and Colonial Modernity in Egypt is a groundbreaking work. It is the first monograph to chart a modern history of childhood in the Middle East. It explores uncharted sources, such as children's press, children's literature and memoirs, to portray a rich fabric of an intimate domain of modernity. Morrison portrays children as actors in Egypt's modern history and thus examines how the everyday of modernity was experienced. In doing so, her narrative weaves together history and memory, both personal and national. The book takes gender seriously as a category of analysis and explores its interaction with age and class. Morrison also takes emotions seriously, by integrating them into the analysis and by foregrounding empathy as a vital tool of the historian's toolkit.' - Liat Kozma, author of Policing Egyptian Women. "This is a beautifully written account of changing ideas and constructions of childhood in early twentieth-century Egypt. Based on contemporary autobiographies, magazines and children's literature, Morrison paints a fascinating and compelling picture of children's lives which will appeal to historians, anthropologists and anyone interested in different childhoods in different places." - Heather Montogomery, Open University, UK "Drawing on the children's press and literature, and on the autobiographies and writings of Egypt's literate classes, Morrison accounts for modern Egyptians came to record their childhood as a distinct period in their personal development. Using childhood as a category of historical analysis, Morrison contextualizes and analyzes those Egyptians' reflections on their increasingly state-prescribed roles in state building and colonial resistance. The result is not only an engaging history of the emergence of the category of childhood in modern Egypt, but also a critical account of the Egyptian nation's journey from colonial childhood to independent maturity." - Lisa Pollard, The University of North Carolina, Wilmington, USA

• Introduction 1.Reforming Childhood in the Context of Colonialism 2.Nation-Building and the Redefinition of the Child 3.Child-Rearing and Class 4.Girls and the Building of Modern Egypt 5.Constructing National Identity through Autobiographical Memory Conclusion Bibliography