Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theatre Studies

Nehad Selaiha is Professor Emeritus of Drama and Theatre Studies at The Academy of Arts in Cairo, Egypt, the resident drama critic of the national English-language newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly and the author of many books on theater in both Arabic and English. She has locally published in English six collections of articles on the Egyptian theater (1992 to 2004) and contributed studies to several publications in Europe and the States, including:

The Local Meets the Global in Performance; Pirkko Koski and Melissa Sihra (eds.), Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010.

Global Ibsen: Performing Multiple Modernities; Erika Fischer-Lichte, Barbara Gronau, and Christel Weiler (eds.), Routledge, New York, 2011.

Antigone on the Contemporary World Stage; Erin B. Mee and Helene P. Foley (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2011.

Also contributed, with Sarah Enany, “Women Playwrights in Egypt” to a special issue of Theatre Journal dedicated to Contemporary Women Playwrights (volume 62, Number 4, December 2010), a publication of The Johns Hopkins University Press in cooperation with the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Her most recent publication in the West is: The Fire and the Frying Pan: Censorship and the Performing Arts in Egypt, The Drama Review (TDR), Fall Issue, 22 August 2013.

 She has been honored in several Arab theater festivals and events, both locally and internationally, including the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre in 1996 for her work in supporting experimental artists and the independent theatre movement, and was awarded the Egyptian State Excellence Award in Literature in 2003; and the State Appreciation Award in Literature in September 2013.