Filming Modernity and Islam in Colonial Egypt

Explores over 30 feature films from the formative years of Egyptian cinema (1919-52) to contest the contradiction between Islam and innovation.

Dr. Heba Arafa Abdelfattah graduated from Georgetown University in the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies in 2017. Her research interests fall within the interdisciplinary area of humanities focusing on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of art as articulated in Arabic and Islamic thought in all its expressions(from the 7th to the 21st centuries). She works with sacred scripture, literary texts, archival documents, films, and other forms of artistic and cultural production to understand creative experiences at the intersection of discourses of modernity and religious mores. Her articles appeared in such peer-reviewed journals as Religions, Review of Middle East Studies, International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Islamic and Muslim Studies (JIMS). Dr. Abdelfattah served as visiting assistant professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She was also a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music and a lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Yale University. She has been an assistant professor in the Division of Humanities at Grinnell College since 2022.