Olga Verlato, Klarman Fellow in Near Eastern Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, has received the Malcolm H. Kerr Award (Humanities) from the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) of North America. Her dissertation, “Languages of Power and People: Multilingualism, Politics, and Resistance in Modern Egypt and the Mediterranean,” approaches modern Egypt as a multilingual country and society in order to challenge a common understanding of the nation state as a monolingual entity.
The dissertation “offers a new perspective on the history of modern Egypt by focusing on the complex relationship between multilingualism and the rise of linguistic nationalism,” noted the award committee citation. “Verlato’s nuanced analysis and innovative approach make a significant contribution to the field of Middle East studies and offer valuable insights into the global history of nationalism and language.”
Verlato completed the dissertation at New York University in the Departments of History and Islamic Studies.
“Receiving this award makes me all the more thrilled at the prospect of continuing to explore questions of language, colonial and nationalist politics, and multilingual exchange and competition here at Cornell,” Verlato said.
As a Klarman Fellow, she is continuing her research on language ideology and multilingualism in modern Egypt. She is working on an article about the history of the Egyptian press as a multilingual field, which she recently presented in a Klarman program workshop.
Verlato is also organizing a lecture series, “Language and Power in the Middle East and Beyond,” hosted by the Department of Near Eastern Studies with the support of the Klarman Fellows program. Set to begin in Feb. 2025, the series will bring to campus scholars whose work is at the forefront of research on language politics, translation, and colonial and post-colonial literature.
Another central topic in Verlato’s dissertation is the history of education, and this year she published an article on “Children in the Archive: Migration and School Life in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt” as part of the special issue “Children and Youth Migrants in Middle East and North African History” in the Mashriq & Mahjar Journal of Middle East and North African Migration Studies.
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