<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><b><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center; line-height: 24px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="6"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 24px; ">Hanan Hammad</span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><o:p></o:p></font></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center; line-height: 24px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Tuesday, February 22<o:p></o:p></font></span></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center; line-height: 24px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">4-6 PM<o:p></o:p></font></span></span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center; line-height: 24px; "><font class="Apple-style-span" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">E51-095</font></span></span></font><o:p></o:p></p></b><div><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="line-height: 24px; "><b><span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; "><br></span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: center; line-height: 24px; "><b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="5"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 18px; ">Industrial Sexuality: Prostitution in al-Mahalla al-Kubra, Egypt, 1927-1949</span></font></b><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; "><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">Dealing with gender and sexuality as intimate aspects of the social transformation associated with the spread of modern industry in Egypt, this talk traces licensed and unlicensed prostitution in al-Mahalla since the establishment of the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company (MSMW) in al-Mahalla in 1927, until prostitution was outlawed in Egypt in 1949. The establishment of the MSWC as the largest domestically-owned textile enterprise in Egypt set in motion unsettling dynamics which transformed the town's socio-economic life. Among these was the immigration of thousands of male and female peasants hired to work in the mill, proliferation of prostitution and venereal diseases, and exposure of private intimacy to public scrutiny and judgment. </span></font></font></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">On one hand, along with public discourses on morality and public health and the conditions of the working class, the state interfered and selectively criminalized particular sexual practices. On the other hand, people of the town continued to practice public prostitution and fight secret prostitution. In doing so, they and the prostitutes themselves were active shapers of their lives rather than mere subjects of the law and the state’s power. </span></font></font></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><font class="Apple-style-span" size="4"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 14px; ">Studying prostitution in al-Mahalla during this period of exceptionally rapid socio-economic change and population growth not only gives us a window on a particular type of illicit sexuality and public morality in a colonial context, it also hints as to gender and inter-communal relations on the margins of a local community, and how its society was transformed. I use prostitution in al-Mahalla in the first half of the 20th century to trace how a provincial community negotiated both an encroaching colonial state, and its puritanical nationalist discourses.</span></font></font></span></p><div><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial" size="3"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px; "><br></span></font></div><p class="MsoNormal"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><b>Hanan Hammad</b> is assistant professor of history at Texas Christian University. In 2010-2011 she is the fellow of Europe in the Middle East – The Middle East in Europe at the Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. </font><span style="color: black; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">She earned her Ph.D in Middle East History with a supporting field in Persian studies at the University of Texas at Austin in 2009</font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">. Currently, she is working on a book manuscript tentatively entitled “</font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Mechanizing People: Industrialization, Sexuality, Gender, and Social Transformation in Modern Egypt”</font></i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">. Her publications include</font><span lang="EN-GB" style="color: black; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-top-color: windowtext; border-right-color: windowtext; border-bottom-color: windowtext; border-left-color: windowtext; border-top-width: 1pt; border-right-width: 1pt; border-bottom-width: 1pt; border-left-width: 1pt; padding-top: 0in; padding-right: 0in; padding-bottom: 0in; padding-left: 0in; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> "Between Egyptian 'national purity' and 'Local Flexibility': Prostitution in al-Mahalla al-Kubra in the first half of the 20</font><sup><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">th</font></sup><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> century" forthcoming in </font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Journal of Social History</font></i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> and " From Condemnation to Fascination: and the Iranian Revolution and Khomeini in the Egyptian Press” in </font><i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">Radical History Review</font></i><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">.</font></span><span lang="EN-GB"><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"> </font></span><span style="color: black; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial">She holds a degree in Mass Communication and Journalism from Cairo University, and before coming to the world of academia she worked as a journalist in Egyptian, Kuwaiti and American newspapers.</font></span><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><o:p></o:p></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 24px; "><o:p><font class="Apple-style-span" face="Arial"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre; "> </span>For more information contact <a href="mailto:mcollett@mit.edu">mcollett@mit.edu</a> </font></o:p></p></body></html>