I urval från Stockholms universitets publikationsdatabas

• National Robin Hoods and Local Avengers

  2021. Elena Chiti. Journal of Historical Sociology 34 (3), 517-534

  Artikel

  The article examines bandit myths from a socio-historical perspective, as part of the socio-cultural reality of present-day Egypt. It engages in the semiotics of banditry encouraged by Stephanie Cronin by taking a first step towards a social semiotics analysis of Rayyā and Sakīna, the two Egyptian female criminals par excellence, arrested in 1920 and executed in 1921. I will argue that Rayyā and Sakīna's criminal myth is currently being resignified in terms that can be conceived of as social banditry. Ethnography, press, and broadcast sources help to highlight two different recent shifts towards bandit myths, linked respectively to national and local circulation.

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• Building a National Case in Interwar Egypt

  2020. Elena Chiti. History Compass 18 (2)

  Artikel

  In November 1920, the Alexandria police arrested two sisters, Raya and Sakina, along with their husbands and others, and charged them with the murder of seventeen women. At the end of a trial held in May 1921, the judges sentenced to death six members of the gang, yet it was Raya and Sakina who monopolized public attention as the first women sentenced to death in the Egyptian secular justice system. A century later, they are still alive in the Egyptian collective memory, which has turned them into a long-lasting criminal myth and remembers them as former prostitutes, madams, and female murderers. Previous studies seem to see the myth as resulting from the supposedly exceptional character of the case. This paper is a first step toward exploring how this exceptionality was constructed and how it took on a national dimension after the announcement of Raya and Sakina's arrest. The focus is on al-Ahram, the main national daily newspaper at the time, which covered the issue systematically, providing information on the investigation while building the case in national terms. A micro-historic approach to al-Ahram will enable a deconstruction of exceptionality through comparison with a precedent. An analysis incorporating both the precedent and Raya and Sakina's case will lead to a first hypothesis about the longevity of Raya and Sakina's case and the disappearance of the precedent from the Egyptian collective memory. This perspective offers insight into the connection between the press, public morality, and nation-building in interwar Egypt, linking textual and extra-textual realities and shedding light on the local aspects that make the nation. Indeed, the organization of al-Ahram in the provinces may be seen as a key factor in revealing what attracts national attention and what remains confined to a local dimension.

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• L'esprit de la révolte

  2020. Leyla Dakhli (et al.).

  Bok

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• What did cosmopolitan mean? An Approach through Alexandrian Francophone literary milieus (1880-1940)

  2021. Elena Chiti. Cultural Entanglement in the Pre-Independence Arab World, 71-92

  Kapitel

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• The Crisis as an Institutional Tool

  2019. Elena Chiti. Culture and Crisis in the Arab World, 103-128

  Kapitel

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• In guerra non mi cercate

  2018. Oriana Capezio (et al.).

  Bok (red)

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