Taha Hussein was one of the most influential 20th-century Egyptian writers and intellectuals, and a figurehead for the Arab Renaissance and the modernist movement in the Arab world. His sobriquet was "The Dean of Arabic Literature" . He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature twenty-one times.
Egyptian literature traces its beginnings to ancient Egypt and is some of the earliest known literature. Ancient Egyptians were the first to develop written literature, as inscriptions or in collections of papyrus, precursors to the modern book.
Mass media in Egypt are highly influential in Egypt and in the Arab World, attributed to its large audience and its historical TV and film industry supplies to the Arab-speaking world.
Raouf Abbas Hamed was an Egyptian historian and a professor of modern history at Cairo University, until his death in 2008. He served as the president of the Egyptian Society of Historical Studies. He filled various senior academic positions, most of which in the Cairo University.
Saad Abdulrahman Albazei is a Saudi intellectual who is known for his critiques of Arabic culture and comparative studies that map the East-West cultural and literary relations.
The Women and Memory Forum (WMF) was founded in 1997 in Cairo, Egypt. The members are women academics, researchers and activists, trying to improve the weak position of Arab women in their culture. WMF "research projects touch upon gendered representations in different historical periods with the aim of challenging some of these representations as well as producing alternative knowledge that could be used for advocating women's rights issues in contemporary Arab societies. "Founded in 1997, Women and Memory Forum (WMF) uses art, research and literature to challenge traditional gender norms and cultural biases against women in current Arab societies. The group provides a crucial space for Egyptian women to come together and discuss cinema, feminist literature and produce creative publications."
Aisha E'ismat Taymur was an Egyptian social activist, poet, novelist, and feminist in the Ottoman era. She was active in the early 19th century in the field of women's rights. Her writings came out in a period of time where women in Egypt were realizing that they were being deprived of some of the rights that Islam granted them. Taymur was one of the earliest Arab women to be alive while her poetry and other writings were recognized and published in modern times.
Somaya Yehia Ramadan is an Egyptian academic, translator and writer. She was born in Cairo in 1951 and studied English at Cairo University. Subsequently, she obtained a PhD in English from Trinity College, Dublin in 1983. She is a convert from Islam to the Baháʼí Faith.
Marilyn Louise Booth is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Suad Joseph received her doctorate in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1975. Dr. Joseph is Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of California, Davis and in 2009 was President of the Middle East Studies Association of North America. Her research addresses issues of gender; families, children, and youth; sociology of the family; and selfhood, citizenship, and the state in the Middle East, with a focus on her native Lebanon. Her earlier work focused on the politicization of religion in Lebanon. Joseph is the founder of the Middle East Research Group in Anthropology, the founder and coordinator of the Arab Families Working Group, the founder of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies, the general editor of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, and the founding director of the Middle East/South Asian Studies Program at the University of California at Davis. She is also the founder and facilitator of a six-university consortium of the American University of Beirut, American University in Cairo, Lebanese American University, University of California at Davis, and Birzeit University Consortium.
Salwa Bakr is an Egyptian critic, novelist and author. She was born in the Matariyya district in Cairo in 1949. Her father was a railway worker. She studied business at Ain Shams University, gaining a BA degree in 1972. She went on to earn another BA in literary criticism in 1976, before embarking on a career in journalism. She worked as a film and theatre critic for various Arabic newspapers and magazines. Bakr lived in Cyprus for a few years with her husband before returning to Egypt in the mid-1980s.
Afifa Karam was a Lebanese-American journalist, novelist, and translator. A writer for the New York City-based Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Hoda, Karam authored three original Arabic novels as well as a number of Arabic translations of novels from English and French. She was an advocate for women's rights in the Mahjar, or Arab diaspora, and of Arab Feminism.
Al Fatat was a women's magazine published in Alexandria, Egypt. The magazine was the first Arab women's magazine and was one of the earliest publications in the country. It was published from 1892 to 1894. Al Fatat is the forerunner of the women's magazines in the Arab countries.
Hind Nawfal was a Lebanese Antiochian Greek Orthodox journalist and feminist writer. She was the first woman in the Arab world and the broader MENA area to publish a women's magazine and an early promoter of feminism.
Ahmed Tawfik Taymour Pasha (1871–1930) was an Egyptian writer and historian. Taymour Pasha was born on 6 November 1871 in Cairo to a family of the Egyptian elite, his father Isma'il Taymur being of Kurdish origin and his mother of Turkish descent.
The Egyptian journal al-Katib al-misri was published in Cairo monthly in the period 1945–1948. It featured articles on literature, arts and science. Although its publisher was Jewish, the magazine did not emphasize this fact. However, Taha Hussein, editor of the magazine, was accused of being part of the Zionist movement due to his post.
Asma Halim (1921–2003) was an Egyptian writer and journalist.
Fawzia Abd Al-Minem Al-Ashmawi is an Egyptian academic, writer, and translator. She works as a Professor of Arabic Literature and Islamic Civilisation in the University of Geneva. She had won the Golden Award in Sciences and Arts from Egypt.
Muhammed Muhammed Gwady is an Arab academic, whose discipline include medicine, literature, history, criticism, language and political and developmental ideology. He is also a professor of cardiology at Zagazig University in Egypt.
Samia Mehrez is an Egyptian professor of contemporary literature, literary critic, and researcher, who was born on 1 January 1955. She is President of the Center for Translation Studies at the American University in Cairo. Mehrez has played a major role in publishing articles on translation, contemporary Arab literature, post-colonial studies and various cultural topics.
