Red Nightshade: Tomatoes and the Making of Modern Egypt

FAIN: FT-291451-23

Ann Marie Gaul
University of Maryland, College Park (College Park, MD 20742-5141)

Research and writing of a book about the development of modern Egypt through the historical importance of the tomato.

Red Nightshade: Tomatoes and the Making of Modern Egypt reassesses dominant narratives about modernity and nationalism through a history of the tomato in Egypt. The book argues that the Egyptian nation, and the interlocking formations of gender, class, race, and ethnicity that define it, came into being through everyday domestic practices like buying, cooking, and eating food. In order to understand how the hierarchies that order our world came to be, the project insists that we reject hierarchies of knowledge that dismiss cooking and other domestic labor as inconsequential. Thus, Red Nightshade considers recipes and culinary practice alongside forms of cultural production like fiction, film, and caricature to examine how domestic and culinary labor intersected with state policies about nutrition and food supply. A Summer Stipend would support writing the book’s final chapter, which examines how Egyptians have used humor about the tomato to question and critique state authority.