Omaima Abou-Bakr is Professor of English & Comparative Literature at Cairo University. She received her education at Cairo University, North Carolina State University, and the University of California at Berkeley. She specialized in medieval Sufi poetry and comparative topics in medieval English and Arabic literature. Her scholarly interests also include women’s mysticism and female spirituality in Christianity and Islam, feminist theology, Muslim women’s history, and gender issues in Islamic discourse and cultural history. She has published a number of articles both in English and Arabic on poetry and medieval literary texts, on historical representations of women in  Muslim societies, women and gender issues in religious discourses, and Islamic feminism. One published book in Arabic—Al-mar'ah wa-al-jindar: Woman and Gender (2002)—deals with women’s intellectual efforts to create emancipatory and egalitarian discourses within an Islamic conceptual and spiritual framework.   

Publication In English:

• The Symbolic Function of Metaphor in Medieval Sufi Poetry," Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 12 (1992), 40-57.
• "The Worshipped Worshipper and the Deified Soul in Shushtari & St. John of the Cross." In Proceedings: The Second International Symposium on Comparative Literature. Cairo: Cairo University, 1993, pp. 40-57.
•  "Abrogation of the Mind in the Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi," Alif, 14 (1994), 37-63.
• "Historical Facts or Fallacies? The Character of the Prophet Muhammad." In Proceedings: The Third International Symposium on Comparative Literature. Cairo: Cairo University, 1995, pp. 347-59.
• "Mystical Elements in John Keats." In Cairo Studies in English. Cairo: Cairo University, 1995, pp. 147-64.
• "To Write or Not to Write? That is the Question." In Proceedings: First EFL Skills Conference: New Directions in Writing. Cairo: The American University of Cairo,1996, pp. 111-15.
•  "The Religious Other: Christian Images in Sufi Poetry," Cairo Papers in Social Science, Vol. 19, no. 2 (1996), 96-108.
•  "The Representation of Female Spirituality in Alexander Pope's 'Eloisa to Abelard.'" In Proceedings: The Fourth International Symposium on Comparative Literature. Cairo: Anglo-Egyptian Bookshop, 1997, pp. 589-609.
• "Allegory of the Soul: A Reading of Rumi's Arabic Poetry." In Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature. Ed. Issa J. Boullata and Terri Deyoung. Fayatteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997, pp. 247-71.
•  "Islamic Sources in Petrus Alfonsi's Disciplina Clericalis." In Proceedings of the International Conference: Comparative Literature in the Arab World. Cairo: Cairo University, 1998.
• "The Image of the Saracen Sultan in Mandeville's Travels." In The Arabs and Britain: Changes and Exchanges. Cairo: The British Council, 1999, pp. 35-45.
•  "Reading History as Text: A Postmodernist Approach to the Medieval Past and the Case of Women Mystics." In Proceedings: The Sixth International Symposium on Comparative Literature. Cairo: Cairo University, 2001, pp. 647-67.
•  "Islamic Feminism: What's in a Name? Preliminary Reflections," AMEWS Review, Vol. xv, xvi Winter/Spring (2001), 1-4.
•   "A Muslim Woman's Reflections on Gender." (1999). http://www.islam21.net
• "Teaching the Words of the Prophet: Women Instructors of the Hadith (14^th & 15^th century)." Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, vol. 1, no. 3(2003), 306-328.
• "Abu Al-hasan Al-Shushtari." In Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia, eds. Michael Gerli & Samuel Armistead. Taylor & Francis publishers, 2003.
• "A Gender-sensitive Reading of Qur'anic Exegesis." In Islamic Feminism and the Law, ed. Qudsia Mirza. London: Routledge/Cavendish, (forthcoming Jan 2010).
•  "Articulating Gender: Muslim Women Intellectuals in the Pre-modern Period." In Arab Women: Past and Present. (under publication 2010).
•  "Inside the Neo-Imperial Harem: Contemporary Women's Memoirs and Islamophobia." (under preparation for submission to publication)
• "A Sufi Analogue to Chaucer's 'The Merchant's Tale?'" (under preparation for submission). 

• "Interpreting Interpretation: The Case of Rabi'ah al-'Adawiya," Hagar, 1 (1992).
• "Metamorphosis in the Arabian Nights," Fusul, 13:1 (1994).
•  "'This is the Work of a Woman from my People': Rabi'ah al-Adawiya Again," Hagar, 3/4(1996).
• "Women Hadith-Scholars in Islamic History," Hagar 5/6 (1998).
•  "A Reading in the History of Islam's Women Worshippers/Mystics." In Women's Time and Alternative Memory, eds. Hoda El-Sadda & Omaima Abou-Bakr. (Cairo: The Women Memory Forum, 1998).
•  "Women and the Medical Profession in Islamic History." In Occasional Papers, no.1 (Cairo: The Women & Memory Forum, 1999).
• "Women and the Religious Life in the Middle Ages between Islam and the West." Occasional Papers, no. 2, Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum,  (2001).
• "The Feminist /Historical Discourse in Qadriya Hussein's Shahirat al-Nisa'." InProceedings: Arab Women in the 1920's. Beirut: Tajamu' al-bahithat, 2001.
•  "Arab Women and Liberational Religious Consciousness." In: Proceedings: The Arab Woman and the Transformations of a New Era. Damascus, Syria: Dar al-Fikr, 2002.
• Woman and Gender: An Islamic Point of View. Damascus, Syria: Dar al-Fikr, 2002.
• "The Image of Men in Modern and Pre-modern Islamic Writings." In Proceedings: A'ishaTaymur and the Challenges of Social Transformations. Cairo: Women & Memory Forum, 2004.
•  "The Discourse of Modernist Fundamentalism and Women's History," Tibah: Journal inFeminist Theory, 3 (2003).
• “Introduction”: Qadriya Husayn, Shaheerat al-nisa’ fi-l-‘alam al-islami (Famous Women in the History of the Islamic World). Cairo: The Women & Memory Forum, 2004.
• “Books Challenging the Dominant: A New Understanding of the Islamic Revival,” Wighat Nazar. Cairo: Dar Al-Shurouq, (November 2004).
• “The Muslim Woman as Symbol,” Wighat Nazar. Cairo: Dar Al-Shurouq, (November 2005).
• “Islamic Feminism: Internal and External Problematics,” Tibah: Journal in Feminist Theory, 7 (March, 2006), 87-103.
• The Nature of Women: Various Approaches Ed. (Cairo: The Women and Memory Forum,2007) 18. Women and Uban Economy in Islamic Egypt. Ocasional Paper, (Cairo: the Women and Memory Forum, 2007.