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As we review the circular path which brought us to a belief that reading history in the broad sense, held the promise of answers to questions which we formulated while paying attention to matters that seem quite remote from that exercise: teaching English Literature, translating, writing fiction, or being a sociologist, we see a certain inevitability in our current research interests and concerns. For this to become as clear to our readers as it is to us, we decided it was perhaps not a bad idea to try to answer the question: how did our initial chosen disciplines bring us together to read history?
 
Hoda’s Ph.D. dissertation was about the English poets in Egypt during the Second World War. She chose this topic because of her interest in the relationship between the ‘self’ and the ‘other’. Her study of literature equipped her with the tools for the analysis of literary, as well as cultural and political discourses. It also drew her attention to the process of producing representations of “other” cultures. Foregrounding the dialectic relationship between dominant and marginal discourses within this context resulted in her focusing on Arab women’s writing regarding its interaction with dominant cultural discourses. In 1991, Hoda together with Salwa Bakr, the feminist Egyptian writer, embarked on a project to publish a series of books, Hagar, devoted to women’s issues. That brought her in close touch with women researchers concerned about gender and culture. In 1993, she joined a gender task force that was trying to push a new version for the standard marriage contract. Time and again as the questionnaires were being analyzed and more people were interviewed to get their feedback on the suggested modifications, it became clear that there were numerous misconceptions that allowed people to view these changes as alien to their culture and heritage. However history clearly documented that adding clauses to the contract was common practice until its standardization early this century. This experience demonstrated to her that many women’s rights projects and issues clashed with concepts and cultural norms perceived as static and non-negotiable. The historicization of traditional concepts and resistant attitudes to change, research in the origins of concepts, a rereading of Arab cultural history from a gender-sensitive perspective might lead to a different picture of the present moment and create the space for desired changes. An idea was taking shape in her mind: a group of researchers from different disciplines who would work together on rereading Arab cultural history from a gender-sensitive perspective, with the purpose of constructing an alternate cultural discourse about women’s status and role in society. Hoda has published widely on comparative issue, but the work she cherishes most is that which she has done on history and representation, cultural identity, women biographies in the early twentieth century and the politics of translation. Hoda is Associate Professor of English at Cairo University.
 
Somaya obtained her Ph.D. degree from Trinity College, Dublin. In Ireland, she has come in touch with the only modern instance of a postcolonized European society. The plight of Ireland’s search for cultural identity separate from Britain provided room for comparison with Egypt, that led her to investigate the debate still rife in Egyptian intellectual discourse which often takes the form of an artificial opposition symptomized in the dichotomy it proposes between modernity and tradition. While living in Europe the question was often brought to her even in the realm of the directly personal. Somaya started reading Egyptian history in the hope of finding an answer to her own position. Soon she came to realize that the rupture presented in liberal discourse between modern and traditional Egypt was not as simple as that discourse withholds: a benighted society dramatically finding itself in the throes of modernity due to the benevolent efforts of an enlightened colonizer. In tracing this notion to its historical roots she found herself immersed in analyzing cultural historical discourse on the topic of women’s emancipation, since women’s status has often been cited as the measuring rod of a society’s ‘advancement’ in emancipatory Egyptian discourse. Somaya is Associate Professor at the Academy of Arts. She has come to be known as a short story writer and cultural critic, who contributes regularly to most Egyptian periodicals; is currently writing her first novel about the marriage of one of Napoleon’s generals to an Egyptian woman from Rachid. She met Hoda through Hagar, whence they had developed an intellectual camaraderie that naturally led to Somaya joining the founding members of Women and Memory.
 
Hala has always been interested in marginal writing by women, and translated as well as introduced some texts for Hagar. It was in July 1995 when she and Hoda started talking about the feasibility of reading culture and history from a gender perspective. Hala’s work had until then remained close to the topic of her MA thesis “Versions of Self, Versions of India…”, which presented an analysis of the representations of European women in post-independence India. But she was and remains deeply interested in representations of women, as well as in all forms of women’s expression: the theatre, the cinema, folk tales and songs in addition to women’s writing. Hala is currently interested in rewriting Arab folk tales from a gender sensitive perspective within the project that naturally lent itself to an interest in informal history. Gender issues have always appeared to her to cover a wide spectrum of subjects and to cross as many disciplines; and she views Women and Memory Forum as a place where she can see others from different disciplines work from the same perspective albeit from a variety of approaches. That gives her the satisfaction that the work ahead is not as unfathomable as it appears to the lonely researcher. To her the Forum provides alternative research opportunities, and a bridge between scholarship and society. Hala is Assistant Lecturer in the Department of English at Cairo University.
 
Omaima who is Associate Professor of English at Cairo University came to Women and Memory Forum through a different path. Omaima’s Ph.D. dissertation was on Shushtari, the Andalusian Sufi poet, and the relationship between Sufi exegesis of the Qur’an and Sufi poetics. Her love for poetry is a reflection of the regard she holds for expression that intensifies human experience, and which in her academic research is fulfilled through the comparative perspective. In her work, Chaucer and Rumi, Christian themes and Sufi poets, the Prophet Mohammad and western texts, then female mystics, are brought together in a dialectic that reveals the author’s fascination for the territories where East meets West. It becomes logical then that she should define the middle ages as a particular time of interest, for her the period contains the historical roots of all religious ideologies, it is the formative period of the Christian and Islamic theological sciences. It is a time where cross cultural and cross religious discourses present a different model of interaction than later, colonial encounters. On the personal level, that period held the promise of an area where she could search for roots of a religious and cultural identity, where she could look for directions on how to reconstruct a modern Muslim identity; a functional, and at the same time a dignified identity in relation to the other. That by necessity led her to the issue of gender. She wishes to do justice to being a Muslim and a woman. But in order to formulate a sound and self-consistent religious gendered identity, it was necessary to investigate the question historically and trace the origins of what seems conflictive in that position today. To do this from a woman’s perspective, she hopes, will offer a different, even a liberating reading of the sort of discourse that has made it difficult for Muslim women to exercise the integrity that the faith of Islam demands of its adherents. Women and Memory for Omaima is a forum where she can be in warm intellectual company, with women who share a basic concern for their society, its culture, and their place in it. Her colleagues there often present an important and necessary sounding board for her thoughts. Working in a group, which thinks and plans together, provides her with the sense of purpose and spirit of perseverance she would have missed had she continued to work alone. And so when Hoda said “Let’s read history” it was like accepting an invitation she had actually sent herself.
 
Iman who is a political scientist by training, came to Women and
Memory Forum through the interest she has developed in feminist sociology. As a development practitioner and a program officer at Unicef, she has come face to face with the problems of poor and deprived women that translated itself into the topic of her doctorate dissertation, which is an attempt to give these women ‘a voice’. Her academic research and her post with Unicef, however, were not enough to fulfil her need for effecting change in women’s status and outlook. With others, she founded ADEW (Association for the Development and Enhancement of Women), a nongovernmental organization which provides micro-credit to female-headed households. Still, there remained to her an un-addressed gap between work in the field and individual research done in order to make socially and economically deprived women visible and audible. For that to happen in an impactful way, the life stories of these women needed to be linked to some long-term project that would provide the sort of continuity needed to ensure such impact. The advantage of working within a forum such as Women and Memory is the fact that the group which constitutes it are highly aware of the importance of disseminating widely, the fruits of their efforts. Unlike academia, the Forum’s research stems from, and is hoped to feed back into, all situations in which women find their efforts stifled on the basis of gender-related misconceptions.
 

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