Arab women going public : Mayy Ziyādah and her literary salon in a comparative context
This thesis proposes that the salon of the early 20 th-century Egyptian literary figure, Mayy Ziyadah (d. 1941) was more dynamically involved in the 19-20th-century Arab Awakening (Nahd & dotbelow;ah) than hitherto recognized. Through careful planning and discreet engagement with the Egyptian and Arab cultural milieu, Mayy Ziyadah attracted the most important and effective intellectuals not only to attend her salon and participate in its proceedings, but also to propagate the ideas and debates of the salon through media channels in the public sphere. To appease different and conflicting interests in a period of transformation, she practiced and adopted an accommodating mode that brought together on the one hand the model of the French salonnieres and, on the other hand, the traditional---though rare---Arab models of women's salons
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2008