My dissertation project asks why art education was introduced in modern Japanese and Egyptian schools. It begins by tracing the trajectory of drawing education. At the inception of the modern school, whether in Europe, Japan, Egypt, or elsewhere, drawing education was a functional skill. It prepared children for such tasks as map making, manufacturing design, and scientific imaging. Yet in 1918 in Japan and 1947 in Egypt, drawing education was redefined as an aesthetic art aimed at subjective expression and beauty. My work begins by asking why drawing education was transformed from a skill to an art.

It proposes that with the introduction of art education, modernity underwent an aesthetic turn. Modern education ceased to be only about teaching children industrial skills or disciplining their bodies. It sought to foster national consciousness by controlling children’s desires. Just as drawing education became a medium for instilling an attachment to national landscapes and national pasts, music education served to inculcate national anthems and national songs, and calligraphy education aestheticized national languages. Bureaucrats and educators saw art education as the most rapid and powerful means of reaching children’s hearts.

Why compare Japan and Egypt? Although geographically distant and culturally dissimilar, Egyptian and Japanese bureaucrats and educators shared a common calculus. Their writings and policies were shaped not by the particularities of culture but by the logic of their position vis-à-vis the modern West. Modernity’s aesthetic turn was global and as such calls for a global comparative framework. My work suggests that crossing regional boundaries provides unique insights into the modern transformation and the ways in which it was inflected in non-Western societies.

Contact Info

Center for Government and International Studies
Room S 152
1730 Cambridge St.
Cambridge MA 02138
adal [at] fas.harvard.edu

• CV
• History 76d: Asian and African Encounters with Empire