The Department of Art History is pleased to announce that Lina El-Shamy successfully defended her PhD dissertation on Egyptian gilded salons on August 12, 2024. Many congratulations, Lina, for your deeply thoughtful work!
Entitled “Salon Modhab: The Gilded Salons of Egyptian Homes,” Lina's study is an historical-anthropological-architectural exploration of a popular domestic guest room (and its related objects—furniture, fine art, crafts, design) that is a feature of many contemporary Egyptian homes. These salons emerge as domestic sites of everyday dissonance, creating what she describes as spatio-epistemic tensions related to the incompatibilities of modern architecture and neoliberal urbanity. The thesis uses both ethnographic and archival encounters and is written with a consideration for the project of recovering alternative worlds and redrafting ways of relating and belonging.
Lina benefitted from the advice of a great committee of colleagues: Drs. Kajri Jain, Heba Mostafa, Amira Mittermaier, and Alison Syme. Thanks also goes to her external examiner, Dr. Jessica Winegar (Northwestern University).
Congratulations Dr. El-Shamy!