Type
Book
Language
Arabic
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
No
Library
Royal Danish Library
Library Asset ID
ISSN: 1110-8673
Record ID
cdi_jstor_primary_27324727
Library Location
JSTOR Arts and Sciences III
Notes
The article presents an analysis of Munira Francis's home cooking book, the first written by a woman to be published and taught as an educational curriculum in Egypt. The article aims to frame the book in a historical context that reveals the social, educational, and gender aspects of the beginning of the last century in Egypt. Home Cooking as a textbook reflects educational ideologies modeled on girls' home economics schools and institutes in Britain, revealing deep connections with modernity and colonial regimes, and also places cooking education in the midst of the emerging transformative movement for women's rights and nationalism. The book also alludes to the tension behind the aspirations of the middle class (Effendi), their loyalty to elite Ottoman culinary traditions, and their voracious appetite for foreign dishes with European names. This article introduces and analyzes Munīra Fransīs’s 1914 book Al-ṭabkh al-manzilī, the first commercially published and curriculum-taught cookbook by a female author in Egypt and the Arab world. The article dissects the book’s content, placing it within its socio-political and gendered context of early 20th-Century Egypt. The cookbook reflects educational ideologies, articulated in line with home economics schools and institutions in Britain, unveiling its connections with modernity and colonization. It is embroidered in debates on women's liberation and national identity. It also reflects a conflict within the middle (effendi) class aspirations, between loyalty to Ottoman elite cooking traditions and an appetite for European dishes.
Görüntüle
Alif (Cairo, Egypt), 2024-01 (44), p.٦٢-٨٥
