Dr. Cynthia Nelson cuts the
ribbon to open the Sony Gallery exhibition "Daughters of the Nile" |
OCT. 1, 2001 Dr. Cynthia Nelson,
director of the Institute for Gender and Women's Studies and professor of anthropology,
inaugurated the Sony Gallery exhibit "Daughters of the Nile: Photographs
of Egyptian Women's Movements 1900-1960," a selection of photographs taken
from the AUC Press book of the same title. The AUC Press celebrated the publication
of the book simultaneously with the Sony Gallery opening. The two editors, Hind
Wassef and Nadia Wassef, stood with Dr. Nelson, AUC Press Director Mark Linz,
and Adham Center Director Abdallah Schleifer at the ceremony, at which Dr. Nelson
made the following remarks: |
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Over the years at AUC I have often been invited to chair a
meeting or introduce a speaker or discuss a lecture, but this is the first time
I have ever been asked to open an exhibit. Tonight it is my pleasure, on both
professional and perhaps more significantly personal grounds, to be sharing in
this event. As director of AUC's newly established Institute for Gender and Women's
Studies, I am pleased to co-participate with the New Woman Research Center, the
Sony Gallery, and the AUC Press as we launch Hind Wassef and Nadia Wassef's edited
book "Daughters of the Nile: Photographs of Egyptian Women's Movements, 1900-1960."
The exhibit represents a selection of photographs from the book, which chronicles
the local articulation of feminisms and emerging women's movements through what
the editors describe as the "mirror of the memory." To quote:
"These photographs are historical documents containing multiple
and contradictory meansings...we project on photographs what we want to see. In
some cases they challenge our stereotypes, in others they affirm them. In all
cases they present a social history-a cataloguing of lost moments."
Although the exhibit has chosen photographs more for their
quality of production and aesthetic value rather than chronology, the original
project of the book spans the period from the early 1900s to the 1960s. The editors
chose to terminate this chronicle in the 1960s because "it was a time when opposition
parties and organizations of a political nature were shut down, signifying a 'ruptured
momentum'.
Yet it was during that moment of ruptured momentum that I first
came to Egypt and AUC. And over the years it has been my good fortune to meet
many of the women represented in the photogrphs of this exhibit-Lili Doss, Ceza
Nabarawi, Marie Assad, Aziza Hussein, Ragia Ragheb, Moufida Abdel Rahman, Aida
Guindi, Inji Aflatoun, and Gazbia Sirry, to mention a few. And over these past
four decades through my encounters with the different generations of students-who
are the heirs to these earlier women's struggles-my own feminist consciousness
has been and continues to be shaped. I am grateful for that.
Tonight we celebrate the many Egyptian women who have enriched
our lives through their commitment and struggle to create a more just and equitable
society. And if you will allow me I would like to take a moment to personally
thank a woman who as a graduate student back in the 1960s mentored me into an
understanding of her society and the challenges facing women, who was the first
to take me out of Cairo to a community in Middle Egypt and let me experience rural
life in transition as the ASU was replacing traditional village authority, and
who, two years ago, was the first person to contribute from her pocketbook to
our fledgling Institute for Gender and Women's Studies. This is the first public
occasion I have had to thank her. Thank you, Marie Assad.
Fittingly, I close these remarks by quoting a few lines from
the forward to the book "Daughters of the Nile," written by Marie Assad, Aida
Guindi, and Aziza Hussein:
"As with the women represented in this collection, we are
united by common goals, even if our paths to their achievement differ. We knew
many of the women in this book through out commitment to social service, and we
are proud to see Egypt's history through their actions. Indeed it is time for
nations to read their histories through women's participation in the development
of their countries. This collection is not only for the women it honors, it is
also for those who share a curiosity about the past and future, irrespective of
gender, race, religion or class." And, I might add, national origin.
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