AUC Press Publishes A Trade In Dreams: A Century Of Egyptian Advertising By AUC Professor Bahia Shehab
- The American University in Cairo Press (AUC Press) published A Trade in Dreams: A Century of Egyptian Print Advertising, a new book by Bahia Shehab, professor of practice and founder of AUC's graphic design program. Drawing on more than 350 advertisements from Egyptian newspapers and magazines, the book traces the evolution of Egyptian print advertising from 1880 to 1980 and reveals how commercial imagery both reflected and shaped a changing society. The book, supported by AUC research grants, draws on extensive archival research, including thousands of advertisements from AUC’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library (RBSCL).
“We encounter large-scale advertisements on a daily basis, yet very little is known about the history of advertising in Egypt,” Shehab said. “The idea for A Trade in Dreams developed because I wanted our students to better understand the reality they live in, and for that to happen, they need to understand the past. As the first book published on the history of advertising in Egypt, I hope readers will enjoy learning more about our communication and visual history, and that the book will become a reference for future research on a subject that is an integral part of our everyday lives.”
Shehab explained that she began her research by examining printed advertisements in the University’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library, some dating back to 1880. The research revealed the extent to which advertising has influenced ideas about beauty, gender, modernity and national identity, and how these ideas evolved over more than a century. It also showed how closely advertising has been intertwined with the social, political and technological changes Egypt has experienced.
The book traces the evolution of Egyptian advertising across five historical periods, beginning in the years before 1920, when newspapers and other print publications helped establish a new advertising landscape. Shehab traces the growing presence of Western products alongside locally produced goods and examines how advertisers responded to technological change, shifting consumer habits and questions of cultural identity. She also explores the publishing revolution of the 1920s and 1930s, including changing representations of women, advertising directed at women, the emergence of celebrity endorsements and the adoption of Western marketing strategies by local producers seeking to compete with foreign products.
The book then examines the growth of Egyptianization in the 1940s and the changing ways advertising presented luxury, entertainment, health and cleanliness, followed by the profound impact of the 1952 Revolution and the nationalization and expansion of state-owned industries. The transition toward an open-market economy in the 1970s brought another transformation, as television introduced motion, color and sound into advertising and contributed to the decline of print. Across these periods, Shehab examines how advertisements responded to political and economic change while introducing new products, lifestyles and aspirations, and how brands that emerged during the print era ultimately became part of Egypt's collective visual memory.
AUC will host the public launch of A Trade in Dreams: A Century of Egyptian Print Advertising on Sunday, September 6, at 7 pm at Ewart Memorial Hall, AUC Tahrir Square. Shehab will discuss the book, followed by a Q&A and the opening of a new exhibition, curated by Shehab and Amgad Naguib, that takes visitors on a journey through a century of Egyptian advertising from 1880 to 1980. Open to the public until September 30, the exhibition features original advertisements, vintage products and timelines organized around five imagined characters, each offering a different perspective on how advertising shaped desire, identity and everyday life in Egypt. Copies of the book will be available for purchase and signing by the author at the public launch.
Bahia Shehab is an artist, designer, art historian and a professor at AUC. Her work has received numerous international awards, including a TED Senior Fellowship, a Prince Claus Award and the UNESCO-Sharjah Prize for Arab Culture. She is the author of A Thousand Times NO: The Visual History of Lam-Alif and co-author of A History of Arab Graphic Design, published by AUC Press in 2020.
AUC Press, founded in 1960, is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East. It publishes scholarly and general works on the region across a wide range of subjects, including Egyptology, history, politics, anthropology, sociology, art, architecture and biography, as well as Arabic language learning books and novels under its Hoopoe fiction imprint.