Cairo Studies in English:

Journal of Research in Literature, Linguistics and Translation Studies

Department of English Language and Literature

Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Egypt

(ISSN: 0575-1624)

 Cairo Studies in English (CSE) is a journal of research in literature, linguistics and translation studies, published by the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Egypt.

The emergence of Cairo Studies in English marks an important moment in the history of the decolonization of Egyptian universities. The first volume was published, as The Annual Bulletin of English Studies in 1953, after the 23 July 1952 Revolution against monarchy and the British occupation, and yet before the evacuation of the British colonial forces from Egypt in 1956. Although it was described as an annual bulletin, a second volume did not appear in 1954 due to an extended period of anti-colonial political turmoil, which was marked by the decision of Egyptian academic and intellectual, Taha Hussein (Dean of the Faculty of Arts), to replace British academics with a British-educated generation of Egyptian academics. This act of academic decolonization and nationalization of the Department of English in 1954 was compared by the late Professor Amin Ayouti to the nationalization of the Suez Canal in 1956.

The Department revived its publication by issuing Cairo Studies in English in 1959 (edited by Magdi Wahba). In his Editorial Note, Professor Magdi Wahba explained the changes in the following:

After an absence of four years, the Annual Bulletin of English Studies feels that its name has been singularly inappropriate. The new name which the old Bulletin has adopted is Cairo Studies in English in the hope that this will serve the dual purpose of situating the publication geographically and avoiding all reference to a periodicity that it may find itself unable to sustain.

The Department Library (the Magdi Wahba Library) holds copies of the 1953 and 1959 volumes, followed by the 1981 volume entitled Centenary Essays on George Eliot and subtitled “Supplement to Cairo Studies in English”, collected by Magdi Wahba. The only reachable traces of the volumes published in the 1960s and 1970s can be found online on WorldCat.org which includes entries of Cairo Studies in English 1961-1962, and another volume of Cairo Studies in English 1963-1966. The archives of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research maintain that Cairo Studies in English was catalogued in 1970 upon receiving an ISSN (issued in France, before there was an ISSN issuing body in Egypt), and has been catalogued since the 1960s with the Library of Congress.

Almost a decade after its last volume, Cairo Studies in English was issued again in 1990, with the publication of Cairo Studies in English – a Special Issue in Honour of Magdi Wahba. In her Foreword, Professor Hoda Gindi, the editor of this volume, briefly recounted the history of Cairo Studies in English and asserted the plan to revive it, stating the following:

It is more than fitting, it is right, that the first issue of the resurrected Cairo Studies in English should be a volume in honour of Magdi Wahba, the founder of the journal and its longtime editor. It was Magdi Wahba’s vision and inspiration that brought about the publication of the first, and for some time, the only journal devoted to English academic studies in Egypt, the Annual Bulletin of English Studies, the precursor of Cairo Studies in English … Other periodicals there had been, but those were only concerned with creative writing and were edited by British nationals, but the Annual Bulletin of English Studies was original in its conception because it provided a forum for scholarly articles and was, moreover, edited by an Egyptian.

Cairo Studies in English continued being published irregularly throughout the years, taking the form of an occasional volume, a festschrift or a book. In 2016, the Department Council adopted a Cairo Studies in English publication plan, which involves an annual thematic publication of the journal and a commitment to ensure the continuity and visibility of Cairo Studies in English. With the publication of the 2017 volume on “Language, Literature and the Arts,” Cairo Studies in English went online, hosted by the official national online publisher, the Egyptian Knowledge Bank.

The recent revival of Cairo Studies in English involved a 3-year publication plan, which would include three thematic volumes: Language, Literature and the Arts (2017); Gendered Identities in the Arab World (2018); and Humanities and Social Sciences in the Digital World (2019). This was accompanied by the formation of an international advisory board, in addition to the editorial board, as well as inviting guest editors. Future plans involve publishing two issues per year – a thematic and an open one. Our vision for Cairo Studies in English is to ensure its visibility and accessibility as an Egyptian journal in the humanities and social sciences of international standing.

Copyright policy:  

The journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright, and to retain publishing rights without any restrictions.

Open access:

The journal is an open-access journal. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles under the following conditions: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

For more information:

This work is licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Plagiarism:

The journal has a strict policy against plagiarism. All submitted manuscripts are checked for plagiarism using professional plagiarism-checking software. Submitted manuscripts with an unacceptable similarity index resulting from plagiarism are rejected immediately.