Omnia El Shakry specializes in the intellectual and cultural history of the modern Middle East, with a particular emphasis on the history of the human and religious sciences in modern Egypt. El Shakry is a founding member of the Middle East/ South Asia Studies Program at UC Davis. Omnia El Shakry is the author of The Arabic Freud: Psychoanalysis and Islam in Modern Egypt (Princeton University Press, 2017), which traces the development of psychoanalysis and discourses of subjectivity in postwar Egypt as part of the transregional history of ideas of the self and the unconscious. You can listen to podcasts on the book here and here. Most recently, she edited Understanding and Teaching the Modern Middle East as part of the Harvey Goldberg Series for Understanding and Teaching History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020). She is currently working on two book projects. The first centers on the oeuvre of Sami-Ali, the Arabic translator of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, author of a large body of original psychoanalytic writings, and translator of the poetry of Sufi masters. The second is on the vibrant intellectual and religious exchange between Muslim and Catholic scholars in twentieth century Egypt.
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