Jennifer L. Derr

Jennifer L. Derr is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she teaches courses in the history of the modern Middle East, critical geography, and the history of medicine. She completed a PhD in History at Stanford University in 2009. She also holds a Bachelor of Science in Biological Sciences from Stanford University and a Master of Arts from Georgetown University in Contemporary Arab Studies. Professor Derr’s research examines the intersections among science, medicine, political economy, and the environment in the modern Middle East. Her first manuscript, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt, is forthcoming from Stanford University Press in July 2019. The Lived Nile argues that, within Egypt’s colonial economy, the materialities of a newly constructed Nile River were central to the production of subjectivity. Constructions of knowledge, authority, and the human body itself were shaped by the material form and practice of the river. Professor Derr’s research has been supported by a number of organizations, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Hellman Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Commission, and the Social Science Research Council.