KITCHEN HISTORIES IN MODERN NORTH AFRICA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Arabic and Islamic Studies By Ann M. Gaul, M.A. Washington, DC May 6, 2019 Copyright 2019 by Ann M. Gaul All Rights Reserved ii KITCHEN HISTORIES IN MODERN NORTH AFRICA Ann M. Gaul, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Elliott Colla, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation is a comparative study of modern Egypt and Morocco from the turn of the twentieth century through the 1970s, narrated through the lens of the urban middle-class kitchen. Scholars of the region have paid increasing attention to domestic spaces and the politics of gender in the formation of national identity, but with a tendency to focus on written sources, nationalist movements, and formal concepts. I suggest that the notions of modern home and family that underpinned nationalist politics and cultures in Egypt and Morocco cannot be fully understood without an exploration of the kitchen as both a conceptual and material space. By tracing the histories of cooking stoves and cookware, cookbooks, and foods associated with “national cuisines,” I use the kitchen to tell a narrative that grounds abstract processes in everyday material, affective, and sensory contexts. I show how the home kitchen was crucial to the formation of modern national cultures as well as the figure of the middle-class housewife as a new kind of worker, and the concept of domestic happiness. The dissertation uses literary analysis, archival data, and ethnography to explore relationships between dominant discourses and quotidian experiences. These methods bridge the seams that both connect and differentiate vernacular accounts from formal histories, domestic spaces from publics, and rationalizing tendencies from intuitive ones. By pursuing a comparative approach with examples from comparable yet distinct cases, I also highlight the historical contingencies entailed in the emergence of modern home kitchens. Why did Arabic cookbooks written for women emerge as a popular genre in Egypt in the 1950s and 60s, but not Morocco? iii How did similar models of gas stoves become attached to different subjectivities, sensibilities, and cookware materials in each society? Why was middle-class refinement associated with urban dishes featuring cinnamon and saffron in Morocco, but hybrid dishes featuring béchamel or other European techniques in Egypt? In addressing these questions, I contend that everyday culinary practices and spaces were essential to forging new understandings of national identity, gender, and class––often in ways that elided or overwrote existing narratives and categories. iv For my parents, John and Alicia, and for my godmother Tona. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation was a collective effort, and in researching and writing it I have accumulated a large number of debts that I look forward to paying back and forward. (That said, of course I alone bear responsibility for the shortcomings of the finished product.) My first words of gratitude belong unreservedly to the Egyptian and Moroccan families who opened their homes and kitchens to me, starting with the Ait Tamment family of Tinzert, Morocco, with whom I lived for two years between 2007 and 2009. My oldest and strongest sensory memory of Morocco remains their wood-burning bread ovens and the delicious tunnirt that Fdila baked there. Since then, I have been welcomed into the homes of dozens of families in Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Egypt, and Morocco; without their graciousness and willingness to educate an ignorant American about their food cultures, this project could never have materialized. It humbles me to reflect on how much they have given me, and this project is meant first and foremost to honor and acknowledge their generosity. For the most part names have been changed in the text to preserve anonymity but here I thank Asma, Azza, Aziza, Fatima, Fawzia, Fifi, Leila, Majda, Mahjouba, Mary, Milouda, Mona, Nawal, Reham, Salma, Salwa, Samia, Samia, Sara, and Zainab. Thanks also go to cookbook authors Choumicha Chafay, Asma El Khattabi, Fatima al-Rahuni, and Claudia Roden for providing invaluable assistance as the leading experts in my field. As a teenager I benefitted from an exceptional set of public high school teachers in Charlotte, North Carolina. David Layton taught me to think like a historian, and Barbara Goodloe taught me to think across disciplines. Patricia Berini taught me to read and write about literature with precision and depth; her classroom was the first place I read Arab women’s writing. Robert Corbin taught me that there is a politics to everything we do and learn, and that the best that the world has to offer is always worth an extra trip. In his violin studio Ernest Pereira taught me that dull hard work can produce joyful and brilliant results, if you believe what you are doing is worthwhile. At Yale my love of Arabic was sparked by Bassam Frangieh; Tanya Agathocleous gave me the tools to ask the critical questions I had been seeking when it came to politics, gender, and culture in the Middle East. At Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies and Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies I benefitted from the support and mentorship of many, starting first and foremost with the superb administrative finesse of Kelli Harris and Meriem Tikue, whose attention to detail and willingness to work with students was especially important to a frequently confused joint degree student. Stephanie Hakeem was instrumental in making the defense process especially smooth. Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, where I completed my MA, was the first place I felt I had a true intellectual home. Fida Adely expanded my ability to grapple with gender and the concept of culture by an order of magnitude; Rochelle Davis taught me the foundations of academic writing and the contours of the field of Middle East studies. During my time at Georgetown, classes with Osama Abi-Mershed, Mohammad Alahmad, Rodney Collins, Noura Erakat, Suzanne Stetkevych, and Ted Swedenburg provided crucial building blocks of this project and sharpened the focus and effectiveness of all my research and teaching. Belkacem Baccouche deserves particular mention for his indefatigable and tireless commitment to his students and to their love of the Arabic language, which, needless to say, is a cornerstone of this project. vi I have also been lucky in an endlessly supportive committee. Jonathan Smolin graciously sent me spectacular images of women cooking at the wābūr and literary references alongside the kind of practical wisdom that helps get a dissertation to the finish line. Kathryn de Luna pushed me to new theoretical and methodological horizons and helped maintain my sense of wonder at learning new things even into my final years of graduate study. Judith Tucker has been an unfailing source of guidance in the study of gender, Islam, and Middle East history. Elliott Colla has been the best kind of academic mentor there is, understanding my interests and abilities and nudging me in the right directions without boxing me into any kind of corner, encouraging me to return to the field again and again and again, and reading all of my work thoughtfully and critically. He has always already known and trusted my ability to do things I have not imagined or presumed, which is the best gift an advisor can give. Over the course of the transition from student to scholar many of one’s mentors, teachers, supervisors, and discussants occupy an uneasy place between superior and colleague. Over the past decade I am fortunate to have learned from and looked up to a group of individuals who never felt the need to look down on me or make me feel the distinctions of conventional academic hierarchies. In that vein, in addition to my committee members and professors, I thank Michael Allan, Dima Ayoub, Karim Bejjit, Humphrey Davies, Samia Mehrez, Hicham Safieddine, Stacy Holden, Jennifer Dueck, Heather Sharkey, and Sherene Seikaly It costs money to visit archives and buy old cookbooks and many, many funders have generously invested in this project. I am grateful for a Cherwell grant from the American Friends of the Oxford Food Symposium, a Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant from the American Research Center in Egypt, a Multi-Country Research Grant from the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, a Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, a short-term research grant from the American Institute for Maghrib Studies, a research grant from Georgetown’s Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, and a Bibliographical Society of America-Pine Tree Foundation Fellowship in Culinary Bibliography. The Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship included a post-research workshop that was pivotal in the writeup phase of my process and I thank Daniella Sarnoff, faculty facilitators Daniel Purdy and Eduardo Elena, and each fellow present at that workshop; each participant enriched my work with your comments and interventions and their collegiality provided a much-needed burst of energy at a crucial stage in the writing process. Lastly, a graduate fellowship during the 2017-18 academic year provided through my home department at Georgetown, Arabic and Islamic Studies, gave me my dream job for a year: a stipend to do nothing but write up my research all day, every day, wherever I wanted to be, with no other obligations. Many institutions hosted me for talks, workshops, and research over the past five years, each one an important step forward in my research and writing process. Talks at the Oxford Food Symposium in 2015 and 2018 bookended my research process and were wonderful ways to think through the big questions of my work with like-minded food scholars.