Overview
Olga Verlato is a Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow in Near Eastern Studies. She received her Ph.D. in History and Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies from New York University in 2024. Her research centers on the history of modern Egypt and the Middle East, Mediterranean migration and language politics, and media and education. She is currently working on a book project based on her dissertation and tentatively titled "Languages of Power and People: Multilingualism, Migration, and Resistance in Modern Egypt and the Mediterranean." "Languages of Power and People" reframes Egypt's emergence as a (formally) monolingual state by the early twentieth century as the product of a longer history of multilingual competition and exchange amidst the state's reconfiguration as an increasingly autonomous Ottoman province, heightened Mediterranean migration and European inter-imperial competition, and emerging linguistic nationalism. During her PhD., Olga has taught courses on the history of the Middle East, Mediterranean migrations, and media and language politics at New York University as well as at The New School as a part-time faculty member between 2022 and 2023.
Publications
“Children in the Archive: Migration and School Life in Turn-of-the-Century Egypt.” In Children and Youth Migrants in Middle East and North African History (Special Issue). Mashriq & Mahjar: Journal of Middle East & North African Migration Studies 11.2 (2024): 93-117.
“A Latin Alphabet for the Arabic Language: Romanizing Arabic in Late Nineteenth-Century Egypt and Beyond.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 55, no. 3 (2023): 444-460.
“Printing Arabic Manuscripts in the Sixteenth Century.” In Manuscripts and Arabic-Script Writing in Africa, eds. Stewart, Charles and Ahmed Chaouki Binebine. The Islamic Manuscript Association, 2023: 175-197.
“‘Their Parents Are All Sailors and Blue-Collar Workers:’ Elementary Education in the Suez Canal Region at the Turn of the Century.” In Italy and the Suez Canal, from the Mid-nineteenth Century to the Cold War: A Mediterranean History. ed. Barbara Curli. Palgrave MacMillan, 2022: 297-312.
“Practicing Italian Education in the Egyptian 1890s: A Case Study.” In Italian Subalterns in Egypt Between Emigration and Colonialism (1861-1937), ed. Costantino Paonessa. UC Louvain Atelier d'Erasme, 2021: 79-94.
“Even if the Sons of Rum Are not like Him: The Spatial and Temporal Journey of a Late Nineteenth-Century Egyptian Song.” Middle East - Topics & Arguments. 10 (2018): 95-107.
Media and Public History
Conversation Series "History Sounds" at Borderlines, community site of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East