Author
Jonathan Friedlander
Jonathan Friedlander is a historian, author and photographer. Formerly assistant director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, he is presently affiliated with UCLA's Young Research Library. His forthcoming study is entitled Orientalism and Americana: The Middle East in American Jazz.
Articles by this author
America's Music of the Nile
Arts & Culture
The Nile river has been used as motif, a metaphor or both in popular culture, most prolifically in music in the United States for more than 125 years. The most notable uses of the Nile arose during the jazz period, which peaked in the second half of the 20th century and continues to this day.
Greetings from Cairo, USA
History
Arts & Culture
Westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century coincided with the popularity of all things Egyptian. Beginning in 1808 some 25 villages, towns and cities throughout the country were named Cairo. Of them, Cairo, Illinois, became the largest, although today it is Cairo, Georgia, whose nearly 10,000 residents gives it that title. Five of the “American Cairos” produced picture postcards, mostly during the early 20th century: These included both Cairo, Illinois and Georgia, as well as the Cairos of West Virginia, New York and Nebraska. Today these postcards record what these communities—distinct in geography, economy and history but united by a name—regarded as points of pride.