LOCATION: 14E-304

This talk will survey the broad ways that gender plays a role in food traditions within the Coptic Orthodox Christian community, both in Egypt and in diasporic contexts. The overview is followed by a specific examination of gendered food preparation, in the past and present. For instance, while male sacristans are usually charged with making Eucharistic bread, women home cooks have engaged in baking other religiously imbued pastries such as those honoring the feasts of the Archangel Michael and the Virgin Mary. Through a study of ritualistic tools, textual sources, and recent Christian visual media, the talk explores how Coptic women in this highly patriarchal and conservative milieu have used the kitchen to assert their religious expertise and, consequently, how they have played a critical role in upholding communal food traditions.

Febe Armanios is Professor of History at Middlebury College where she is also the Founding co-Director of the Axinn Center for the Humanities. She specializes in the history of Christian communities in the Middle East, especially of Egypt’s Copts, comparative religious practices, as well as food history and media studies. She’s the author of two books, Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt (Oxford UP, 2011) and Halal Food: A History co-authored with Boğaç Ergene (Oxford UP, 2018). Currently, she is completing a third book titled Satellite Ministries: The Rise of Christian Television in the Middle East. She has also begun research for a new project that explores comparative Christian food practices in Ottoman and post-Ottoman locales, including in Egypt, Lebanon, Greece, Cyprus, and Turkey.

The McMillan-Stewart lectures are coordinated by the MIT Program in Gender and Women's Studies and are organized by the holder of the namesake chair, Lerna Ekmekcioglu, Director of the Women’s & Gender Studies Program and member of the MIT History Faculty since 2011. Endowed by Geneviève McMillan, the lectures provide a space for scholars, artists, journalists, activists, and other experts to reflect on issues related to women in the developing world, specifically (but not exclusively) in the Middle East and North Africa. Lectures are free and open to the public.

This event will take place in room 2-105 at 5pm. All are welcome.

“At the Virgin Mary’s Coptic Festival in Naqada, Egypt, August 2022” Photo by Ahmed Mostafa, used with permission.