Paul Sedra

Paul Sedra is Associate Professor of History at Simon Fraser University, and Middle East editor of the Wiley-Blackwell journal, History Compass.  He has taught at Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto, and has published articles in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, the Journal of Religious History, as well as the Middle East working paper series of Yale and Columbia Universities.  The principal focus of his research is the social and cultural history of the modern Middle East.  His most recent book, From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, was published by I.B. Tauris earlier this year.  In the book, Sedra examines the connections between education and the rise of the modern state in nineteenth-century Egypt. Paul is a Contributing Editor of the Pedagogy Page at Jadaliyya.

Book

From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth-Century Egypt (London: I.B. Tauris and Company Limited, 2011).

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

“Exposure to the Eyes of God: Monitorial Schools and Evangelicals in Early Nineteenth-Century England,” Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education, first published on 06 May 2010 (iFirst), 1-19.

“Writing the History of the Modern Copts: From Victims and Symbols to Actors,” History Compass 7, 3 (2009), 1049-1063.

“John Lieder and his Mission in Egypt: The Evangelical Ethos at Work Among Nineteenth-Century Copts,” Journal of Religious History 28, 3 (October 2004), 219-239.

“Imagining an Imperial Race: Egyptology in the Service of Empire,” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 24, 1 (2004), 249-259.

“Class Cleavages and Ethnic Conflict: Coptic Christian Communities in Modern Egyptian Politics,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 10, 2 (July 1999), 219-235.

Chapters in Edited Volumes

“The Patriarch and His Project: Cultivating a Coptic Community in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in Ramez Boutros, ed.Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 1 (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 109-120.  [N.B. A revised and edited version of the chapter published in the 2007 Boudraa and Krause volume, requested for inclusion in the inaugural issue of this journal.]

“Missionaries, Peasants, and the Protection Problem: Negotiating Coptic Reform in Nineteenth-Century Egypt,” in Abbas Amanat and Magnus T. Bernhardsson, eds. US-Middle East Historical Encounters (Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2007).

“Schooling for a Modern Coptic Subjectivity in Nineteenth Century Egypt,” in  Nabil Boudraa and Joseph Krause, eds.North African Mosaic: A Cultural Reappraisal of Ethnic and Religious Minorities (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 196-213.

“The Journals of an Ottoman Student in England, July 1829 to January 1830,” in Camron Michael Amin, Benjamin C. Fortna, and Elizabeth Frierson, eds. The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 401-405.

“Observing Muhammad ‘Ali Pasha and His Administration at Work, 1843-1846,” in Camron Michael Amin, Benjamin C. Fortna, and Elizabeth Frierson, eds. The Modern Middle East: A Sourcebook for History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39-42.

“Modernity’s Mission: Evangelical Efforts to Discipline the Nineteenth-Century Coptic Community,” in Eleanor H. Tejirian and Reeva Spector Simon, eds. Altruism and Imperialism: The Western Religious and Cultural Missionary Enterprise in the Middle East, Middle East Institute Occasional Papers 4 (New York, New York: Columbia University Middle East Institute, 2002), 208-235.

“Ecclesiastical Warfare: Patriarch, Presbyterian, and Peasant in Nineteenth-Century Asyut,” in Abbas Amanat and Magnus T. Bernhardsson, eds. The United States and the Middle East: Cultural Encounters, YCIAS Working Paper Series Vol. V (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Center for International and Area Studies, 2002), 290-314.

Encyclopaedia Entry

“Interreligious Dialogue,” in Peter N. Stearns, ed. Encyclopaedia of the Modern World: 1750 to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2008).