Sara Khorshid

- Lecturer

image of Sara Khorshid
Lecturer, Department of History, Western University
Email: skhorshi@uwo.ca
Office: Stevenson Hall 2160
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 3:00 - 4:00 pm or by appointment

Research Interests

Middle Eastern history, history of modern Egypt, history and popular culture, decolonization and postcolonialism; the cultural history of the Cold War; 20th-century American history; transnational history; Arab-Western encounters.

Sara Khorshid has also studied Canadian history and Canadian gender history extensively.

Professional Experience

Sara Khorshid is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Western University where she is writing her PhD dissertation on Egyptians’ postcolonial cinematic representations of the foreign “other” during the Cold War. Prior to completing her master’s at Western University on the history of American missionaries in Egypt, Khorshid worked as a Cairo-based journalist and columnist for 15 years. Her articles appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, the Atlantic Council, HuffPost, and numerous other international and regional Arab media outlets. She covered Arab reactions to the 2003 Iraq war, Western-Arab relations, and more, writing feature articles and news reports for several media outlets. In the wake of the 2011 uprisings in the Arab world, which came to be known as the Arab Spring, she continued to write about the uprisings and their aftermath, and she also worked as Senior Editor at the bilingual news website Aswat Masriya, a Thomson Reuters project that operated 2011-2017.

Select Publications

Book Chapter

“Egypt: how the revolution has impacted the debate over minority rights and multiculturalism.” In Multiculturalism and Democracy in North Africa: Aftermath of the Arab Spring, edited by Moha Ennaji, 223-245. New York: Routledge, 2014. https://books.google.ca/books?id=MRJgAwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Multiculturalism+and+democracy+in+North+Africa+:+aftermath+of+the+Arab+spring&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjr9vKltMHqAhV7mHIEHUIlAnQQ6AEwAHoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Op-Eds

“Why Netflix’s ‘Queen Cleopatra’ Has Egypt Up in Arms,” Foreign Policy
"Anti-Colonialism Doesn't Mean Ignoring Human Rights Abuses," Foreign Policy
"What Trump’s Loss Means for Authoritarian Leaders," Foreign Policy
"The World Is Watching America’s Reaction to the George Floyd Protests," Foreign Policy
"Egypt’s New Police State," The New York Times
“The Betrayal of Egypt’s Revolution,” The New York Times

Select Conference Papers

“My Wife Is a General Director: Pop Culture and State Feminism in Nasser-Era Egypt," paper presented at the 55th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Nov. 2021.
“The Open Door Film and Women in Post-1952 Egypt: State Feminism, Postcolonialism, and Women’s Voices,” paper presented at the 54th Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Association, Oct. 2020.

Awards

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship, 2021/2022
Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS),2018/2019, 2019/2020, and 2020/2021
John A. Taylor Ontario Graduate Scholarship, 2019/2020 and 2020/2021
Bogal-Szot Award in History,2022
Ivie Cornish Memorial Fellowship in History, 2020 and 2023