Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

9-2025

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

History

Advisor

Beth Baron

Committee Members

Samira Haj

Andreas Killen

Joel Gordon

Omnia El Shakry

Subject Categories

Arts and Humanities

Keywords

Socialism, Cinema, Egypt, 1960s, Nasser

Abstract

This dissertation traces the ups and downs of Egypt’s socialist project on and off the screen from the mid-1950s, when socialist notions emerged in Egyptian mainstream culture, to the mid- 1960s, when critiques of the socialist application gained traction among intellectuals and cultural producers, including film professionals. Analyzing films alongside official documents, speeches, popular and specialized periodicals, conference proceedings, memoirs, interviews, and other cultural artifacts, I ask: How did Egyptians “socialize” the film industry? What constituted a socialist film? What was cinema’s role in molding a socialist society? What “new moral values” were Egyptians supposed to cultivate to become socialist? Who oversaw this inculcation, and what were its means? Structured in two parts, this dissertation offers a conceptual history of Egyptian cinema under socialism and of Egypt’s socialist experiment through the lens of cinema. Each of its four chapters—“The Industry,” “The Film,” “The Compass,” and “The Intellectual”—tackles one aspect of socialist cinema. Collectively, these chapters demonstrate how cinema was both the subject and object of socialist aspirations, contending that cinema was a crucial medium through which a socialist utopia was not only projected and molded but also critiqued and disrupted.

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