Description:

Gendered Nuances in Historiographical Discourses of Medieval Egypt and Syria

This lecture will feature a discussion of semantic inference in biographical literature and narrative chronicles compiled during the Mamluk period (13th-15th centuries), with a focus on depictions of women's deportment considered distinctive but not aberrant, and crimes with ambiguous ascription of blame.

Carl F. Petry is the Hamad ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies, Department of History, Northwestern University. His research focuses on pre-modern Egypt, with emphasis on political economy. He has published: The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 1982); Twilight of Majesty: the Reigns of the Mamluk Sultans al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in Egypt (U. Washington, 1993); Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power (S.U.N.Y., 1994); The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo under the Mamluks (Middle East Documentation Center, U. Chicago, 2012). He has edited and contributed to The Cambridge History of Egypt, vol. 1: Islamic Egypt, 640-1517 C.E. (Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Lunch served.