The Business of Belly Dance and the Gift of the Nile

Globalization, Attention Economies, and Belly Dance in Egypt Today
Meg Morley, SEA Department

Over the past 20 years, internet usage and the number of foreign dancers have grown exponentially in Egypt. As a result, both the style and the business of Egyptian dance are amidst massive changes. Using a theoretical framework of attention economies, this research analyzes the ongoing modifications to Egyptian dance in today's digitally global world.

"The Gift of the Nile": Hydraulic Measurement, Textual Traditions, and the Scientific Revolution
Anthony Greco, History Department

From the ninth to the twentieth century, Abu al-Raddād and his descendants served as the Guardians of the Nilometer (Sahib al-Miqyās). The Guardians measured and reported the height of the Nile during the river's annual flood between June and September. In the eighteenth century, European natural philosophers formed delicate partnerships with the guardians of the Nilometer to challenge the textual traditions of scholasticism and make the scientific revolution. Preserved in Arabic chronicles, these measurements and the Nilometer which produced them continued to shape the history of modern science in Europe and Egypt during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Nilometer tradition continued alongside and shaped newer methods of hydraulic measurement that engineers introduced to the Nile Valley during the modern period. Despite this prestigious legacy, the Nilometer met an inglorious end when the last descendent of Abu al-Raddād to perform this role was arrested for vagrancy, and the Nilometer was converted into a museum.

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