Framing a History of the Present: or, Did the Pearls Scatter to the World’s Fair?
Framing a History of the Present: or, Did the Pearls Scatter to the World’s Fair?
This chapter considers how a volume such as this was celebrated and advertised locally, and how Fawwaz’s contemporaries ‘blurbed’ it for audiences. How did such a framing contribute to the era’s discourse on women’s rights? It then turns to Fawwaz’s attempt to send her volume to Chicago for the 1893 World’s Fair and her correspondence with Berthe Honore Palmer, chair of the Board of Lady Managers. It sets this venture into the context of the Women’s Building and Library founded for the Fair and the American founders’ attitudes toward feminism, international collaboration, and the female populations of societies colonized by European powers. It traces Arab women’s response to the Chicago venture, focusing especially on Hanna Kurani who spoke at the Congress of Women. It also sets Arab women’s attempts to participate in the Exposition within the reaction in Egypt to the way Egypt was represented at the fair, and the controversial presence of dancers who were allegedly from Egypt, in the Midway’s Egyptian café.
Keywords: Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, Bertha Honore Palmer, Women’s Library, ‘A’isha Taymur, Blurbs, Paratext, Hanna Kurani, Egyptian Street, Chicago Midway
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