Overview
Deborah Starr is Professor of Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film in the Department of Near Eastern Studies. She received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. She writes and teaches about identity and intercommunal exchange in the modern Middle East, with a focus on the Jews of Egypt. She is the author of Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema (University of California Press, 2020) and Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture, and Empire (Routledge, 2009). She is also the co-editor, with Sasson Somekh, of Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff (Stanford University Press, 2011). Her research and teaching interests include cosmopolitanism, postcolonial studies, minorities of the Middle East, cinema and media studies, and urban studies.
Courses Taught
- Wondrous Literatures of the Near East
- Minorities of the Middle East
- Sephardic and Mizrahi Identities
- Palestinians in Israel
- Middle Eastern Cinema
- Modern Middle Eastern Literature in Translation
- Cosmopolitanism, Tolerance, and Coexistence
Research Focus
- Modern Arabic and Hebrew literature
- Middle Eastern Cinema
- Contemporary Egyptian Culture
- Mizrahi Literature and Culture
- Minority Communities of the Middle East
- Cosmopolitanism
- Cinema and Media Studies
- Urban Studies
Publications
Books
Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema. (University of California Press, 2020). Open Access: www.ucpress.edu/9780520366206
Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff.
Co-edited with Sasson Somekh. (Stanford University Press, 2011).
Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture and Empire. (Routledge, 2009).
Published Articles
"Global Cinema and Constructions of Race: 'Princess Kouka' in Jericho (1937)." International Journal of Middle East Studies, First View, 2025, 1-24. doi: 10.10.1/S0020743825000145.
"Chalom and cAbdu Get Married: Jewishness and Egyptianness in the Films of Togo Mizrahi.” The Jewish Quarterly Review. 107, no.2 (2017): 209-230. doi: 10.1353/jqr.2017.0007.
“In Bed Together: Coexistence in Togo Mizrahi’s Alexandria Films,” in Post-Ottoman Co-Existence: Sharing Space in the Shadow of Conflict, edited by Rebecca Bryant, 129-156. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016. Open access: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/downloads/OpenAccess/BryantPost-Ottoman/9781785333750_OA.pdf.
“Masquerade and the Performance of National Imaginaries: Levantine Ethics, Aesthetics, and Identities in Egyptian Cinema,” Journal of Levantine Studies. 1:2 (Winter 2011), 31-57. Open Access.
“Sensing the City: Representations of Cairo’s Harat al-Yahud,” Prooftexts, 26, no. 1-2 (2006): 138-162. doi: 10.1353/ptx.2007.0010
“Drinking, Gambling, and Making Merry: Waguih Ghali’s Search for Cosmopolitan Agency,”
Middle Eastern Literatures 9, no. 3 (2006): 271-285. doi: 10.1080/14752620600999896
- Revised and updated version printed in The Edinburgh Companion to the Arab Novel in English, edited by Nouri Gana (University of Edinburgh Press, 2013).
“Recuperating Cosmopolitan Alexandria: Circulation of Narratives and Narratives of Circulation,” Cities. 22, no.3 (2005): 217-228. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2005.03.009
“Reterritorializing the Dream: Orly Castel-Bloom’s Remapping of Israeli Identity,” in Mapping Jewish Identities, edited by Laurence J. Silberstein (NYU Press, 2000).
“Egyptian Representation of Israeli Culture: Normalizing Propaganda or Propagandizing Normalization?” in Review Essays in Israel Studies, Books on Israel 5, edited by Laura Eisenberg and Neil Caplan. (SUNY Press, 2000).
Open Access Digital Archive
“Waguih Ghali Unpublished Papers: Diaries (1964-1968) and Manuscript Fragments” [https://hdl.handle.net/1813/33224].
Selected Short Essays
Entry on “Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff” for the Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women. The Jewish Women’s Archive (2025). Open Access.
“Writing about Writing about Alexandria,” Politics/Letters. 13 (September 2018). Open Access.
Interview with Diana Athill, The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian Manic Depressive in the Swinging Sixties, edited by May Hawas. Vol. 1 (American University in Cairo Press, 2017).
Interview with Samir Basta, The Diaries of Waguih Ghali: An Egyptian Manic Depressive in the Swinging Sixties, edited by May Hawas. Vol. 2 (American University in Cairo Press, 2017).Media
Selected Media
Manya Pashman, “The Forgotten Exodus: Egypt” podcast episode on Egyptian Jews, American Jewish Committee. (August 15, 2022).
Olga Verlato, “On Togo Mizrahi and Layla Murad: A Conversation with Deborah Starr and Hanan Hammad.” Borderlines. (May 5, 2022).
Eitan Nechin, “Overlooked No More: Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff, Writer of Levantine Identity.” New York Times. April 16, 2022.
Walter Armbrust, “Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema,” Oxford University Middle East Center Booktalk Podcast (October 10, 2021).