At the beginning of 2011, independence movements arose across the Middle East and stoked the fires of revolution in nations like Libya, Egypt and Syria. Colloquially known as “The Arab Spring,” the movement toppled dictatorships that had existed for decades. Those dictatorships also provided stability for foreign business conducted in their countries, including Texan oil field companies. But as civil unrest persists and the political story unfolds, Texan oil field companies continue to do business in the region, largely unabated. This report addresses the effects of the Arab Spring on the performance of select Texan oil field companies operating in Libya. / text

This thesis studies the formulation and expression of Egyptian nationalism in the period 1882-1919. In particular, it argues that Egyptian nationalism, rather than having the territorial nation-state as the highest form of nationalist expression, was composed of multiple overlapping and contingent identities. Furthermore, this thesis will draw attention to inter-and intra- elite rivalries between power bases within Egypt, including the office of the Khedive, the urban elite, landowners, European powers, and Ottoman representatives; and the way in which these vying groups affected the growth and composition of the Egyptian nationalist movement. This thesis also contends that the policies and ideologies of Egyptian nationalists were both contingent and fluid, as were the self-identities of the Egyptian population. Egyptian nationalism in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries took many of its characteristics and methodologies from the global context of competing imperialisms as well as trans-national anti-colonial movements. Therefore, this thesis seeks to locate Egyptian nationalism in the period 1882-1919 within the global and local context of competing power bases and popular expectations. / text

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This thesis is a study on the response of the British and the French to Muhammad 'Ali's policies. Muhammad 'Ali success in transforming Egypt into a powerful state was aimed at developing Egypt's commercial network and expanding her territorial boundary. The gains that Muhammad 'Ali achieved from the commerce and territorial conquest, however, was at the expense of what England had enjoyed before Muhammad 'Ali rose to power. In order to regain what had been lost to Muhammad 'Ali England undertook a strong response consisting of economic, military and diplomatic pressure which led to the collapse of Muhammad 'Alis power. France, on the other hand, had a positive reaction and gave full support to Muhammad 'Alis expansionist policy. Nevertheless, France's final act was to abandon policy of support for Muhammad 'Ali as a result of European politics when a new French government sought rapprochement with England. Muhammad 'Ali became a cost of rapprochement.

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Through an examination of the life and writings of the Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), this dissertation seeks to determine the conceptual bases of the Islamic movement in twentieth-century Egypt. It is argued that the central factor in the rise of islamically-oriented opposition to the elite order has been the gradual emergence in Egypt of the distinctively modern form of the nation-state. Specifically, the processes of Egyptian State formation are seen as responsible not only for the creation of conditions conducive to oppositional Islamism, but for engendering notions of national community and historical transformation which, through the processes of discursive transmutation, have provided the core of political sentiment undergirding this particular form of dissent.

The autonomy of the shari` a courts in Ottoman-Egypt during the 16th and 17th centuries, is the subject of this thesis. Specifically, it pursues the question of formalization (the incorporation of courts and their functionaries into the civil apparatus of the state) and, relatedly, the legal innovations which accompanied this policy (the merger of siyasa to shari `a and the development of the qanun ), gauging the implications of both for the judiciaries independence from the state. With regards to procedural law, it finds the courts to be the autonomous domain of its practitioners, muftis and qadis, while concluding that formalization renders the efficacy of the courts dependent on the fortunes of the state. With respect to the two innovations described above, it finds that in the contemplative realm of law, the manipulations of the state spurred certain legal trends without affording the state a place in the domain of law.

Despite popular and scientific interest in mummies, very few studies of ancient Egyptian mummy collections, especially from the same area, have been conducted. As such, this research is the first comprehensive analysis of mummies from Akhmim, Egypt and is one of only a few studies that investigate a large mummy collection from both a biological and cultural point of view. A group of 25 mummies from the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium database was evaluated using computed tomography. Using computed tomography and the associated imaging software, two dimensional (2D) x-ray scan images were analyzed, then processed and edited to generate three dimensional (3D) models of each mummy. Both the 2D and 3D images of each mummy were used to collect both biological information and cultural data in a nondestructive manner. Results from this study indicated that the population of Akhmim was very diverse. Furthermore, this research both supports and challenges conventional wisdom on how ancient Egyptians were mummifying their dead.

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