Faculty and Staff
Kenneth M. Cuno
Associate Professor of History
I teach the early modern and modern history of the entire Middle East, though my research has been mainly in the social history of Egypt, 18th-20th centuries. My first book The Pasha's Peasants: Land, Society and Economy in Lower Egypt, 1740-1858 (Cambridge, 1992) received “honorable mention” in the Albert Hourani book prize competition of the Middle East Studies Association. A volume I co-edited with Manisha Desai, Family, Gender and Law in a Globalizing Middle East and South Asia, is due to be published by Syracuse in November 2009.
From political economy and agrarian history in the 18th and 19th centuries my research interests have moved to the history of the family in Egypt during the “long” nineteenth century. I am particularly interested in changing patterns of family formation and changing attitudes toward marriage, divorce, and other aspects of family during the past 200 years. A continuing interest of mine that connects the first book with the second is legal history – the history of Islamic law as it was applied in and affected society, the use of legal records (court registers and fatwas) as sources for social history, and the evolution of applied Islamic law during the era of codification and secularization. Another interest I am pursuing is the shaping of identity through historical writing in Egypt and the Middle East generally. Last but not least, teaching and public speaking responsibilities have necessitated I address U.S. policy in the Middle East.
These eclectic interests are reflected in my publications, the most recent of which are: “Divorce and the Fate of the Family in Modern Egypt,” in Family in the Middle East: Ideational Change in Egypt, Iran, and Tunisia, ed. Kathryn Yount and Hoda Rashad (Routledge, 2008), 196-216; “Household: Comparative Practices” in the Encyclopedia of Women in World History, Ed. Bonnie G. Smith (4 vols.; Oxford, 2007), 2:486-491; “United States Policy towards the Middle East” in the Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450 (Detroit, 2007), 3:1101-1108; “Contrat salam et transformations agricoles en basse Égypte à l’époque ottomane,” Annales, Histoire, Sciences Socials, 61, 4 (July-Aug. 2006), 925-940; “Demography, Household Formation, and Marriage in Three Egyptian Villages during the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” in Sociétés rurales ottomanes / Ottoman Rural Societies, ed. Mohammad Afifi, et al. (Cairo, 2005), 105-117; “Constructing Muhammad Ali,” Ahram Weekly, No. 768., 10-15 Nov. 2005; “The U.S. in the Middle East: Oil as a Factor,” Bridges: an Interdisciplinary Journal of Theology, Philosophy, History and Science, 1, 1/2 (Spring/Summer 2004), 69-86; and “Ambiguous Modernization: The Transition to Monogamy in the Khedival House of Egypt,” in Beshara Doumani, ed., Family History in the Middle East: Household, Property, and Gender (Albany, 2003), 247-270.
For archived radio and TV interviews see the “Members and Media” link from the web site of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies.
Undergraduate courses
Introduction to the World of Islam
History and Civilization of the Islamic Middle East, 7th-20th Centuries C.E.
Egypt since the First World War
The Transformation of the Modern Middle East 1566-1914
The Middle East in the Twentieth Century.
Graduate courses
Middle East social history; core readings/historiography; women; family, gender and law; peasants; nationalism.