The tomato is not indigenous to Egypt, so how did it become ubiquitous in Egyptian cooking? In her new book, “Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato” (University of California Press, 2025), Dr. Anny Gaul explains how we can understand Egypt’s modernization project over the last two centuries through the tomato. Drawing from cookbooks, archival materials, oral histories of women cooks, and vernacular culture, Gaul traces the tomato’s rise to prominence while also telling the complicated story of domestic politics and Egypt’s cultivation of a national identity. By focusing on the lives and perspectives of the country’s overwhelmingly female home cooks, Gaul also explains how women forged key aspects of public culture that defined how Egyptians came to recognize themselves and one another as Egyptian. This discussion will be hosted in partnership with Rice University’s Department of History, the Department of Modern and Classical Languages, Literatures and Cultures, the Department of Asian Transnational Studies, and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality.
This event is free and open to the public.
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Registration
Registration will open soon.
Participants
Moderator
Hossam ElSherbiny, Ph.D.
Associate Teaching Professor in Arabic, Director of Language Instruction, Rice University
Moderator
Kelsey Norman, Ph.D.
Fellow for the Middle East and Director, Women’s Rights, Human Rights and Refugees Program, Baker Institute, Rice University
Featured Speaker
Anny Gaul, Ph.D., is a cultural historian whose research and teaching interests lie at the intersections of food, gender, and culture in the Arabic-speaking world. She is the author of the 2026 James Beard Media Award-winning "Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian Culinary History of the Tomato" (University of California Press, 2025) and co-editor of "Making Levantine Cuisine: Modern Foodways of the Eastern Mediterranean" (University of Texas Press, 2021).
Her scholarship has appeared in Gender & History, Middle Eastern Literatures, Gastronomica, Global Food History, Mashriq & Mahjar, the Journal of Women’s History and the Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies. Her work has also been featured in The Nation, Eater, al-Quds al-Arabi, and Ahram Online.
