I am a writer, editor, and PhD Candidate in History working across the fields of modern Middle East and late Ottoman History, Religious Studies, Archival Studies, and the Latin East (Middle East-Latin American studies). My research examines religious difference, communal institutions, the development of sectarianism, and historical memory in modern Egypt as well as transnationally between El Salvador and Palestine during the 20th Century.

Provisionally titled “Their Own Poor: Communal Identity, Charitable Societies, and the Making of Sectarianism in Modern Egypt 1879-1939” my dissertation examines the formation, development, and popularity of charitable societies in Egypt during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I consider the meteoric rise and proliferation of charitable associations during this period as both a form of cross-confessional solidarity as well as communal boundary-making  at a time when the meaning of sectarianism in Egypt was debated and forged. I argue that charitable societies were central to how religious communities articulated the boundaries of their identity and how they related to ‘others’ within the Egyptian national project during the nationalist movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

My research and language studies have been generously supported by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), Fordham University’s Orthodox Christian Studies Center, the Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS), the Critical Language Scholarship (CLS), the Yale Center for Race, Indigenous, and Transnational Migration, the American Society for Church History (ASCH), the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the Borchard European Studies Foundation, the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, and the UCSB Center for Middle East Studies. 

In addition to my academic scholarship, I also write reportage, commentary, and creative nonfiction which further explores questions related to my research through personal and investigative essays on race, religion, and politics in and between Egypt, El Salvador, and the United States. This work is published in The Washington Post, Jadaliyya, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, HAZINE, the Revealer, Sojourners, Contingent Magazine, Rusted Radishes and more. For more information about my research and work, an interview: https://thecchp.com/2020/03/29/interview-with-amy-fallas-philanthropic-solidarities/

“Their Own Poor: Communal Identity, Charitable Societies, and the Making of Sectarianism in Modern Egypt 1879-1939”

ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

2025              “The First Duty of Charity:” Medical Philanthropy, Sectarian Infrastructures, and
                         Legacies of the Coptic Hospital in Twentieth Century Cairo,” accepted for
                         publication in edited volume with the Revue des mondes musulmans et de la
                         Méditerranée (REMMM)

2024               “Sectarian Politics? Securitization, Urban Development, and Coptic Advocacy in
                         Cairo,” chapter in Cairo Securitized with American University in Cairo Press, ed.
                         Paul Amar, 2024.

2023               “Sectarianism and Charity in Modern Egypt: The Coptic Case.” 42 Revue
                         Diasporas, Circulations, Migrations, Histoire (2023).

                        “Charity and Philanthropy in Middle East History,” History Compass, 21(3-4),
                          e12760.

2022               “H-Diplo Article Review of Karine Walther, ‘Dorothy Thompson and American
                          Zionism,’ Diplomatic History 46:2 (April 2022) 263-291.

2016               “From the Cedars to the Frontlines: Danbury’s Greater Syrian Immigrants and the
                         Great War,”Connecticut History Review Journal, 55, no. 2 (Fall 2016), 140-152.


SELECT EDITORIALS AND PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

2023              “The Power of El Salvador’s Palestinian Diaspora,” Institute of Palestine Studies

                        “Palace Intrigue,” Contingent Magazine

                        “Rebelling Against Time in Cairo,” Mada Masr

2022               “When Unity Discourse Dismisses Systemic Sectarianism in Egypt,” Tahrir
                          Institute for Middle East Policy                      
                       
                         “The Faith-Based Politics of El Salvador’s Millennial President,”
                           Religion and Politics

                         “The Forbidden Photographs,” Rusted Radishes Beirut Literary Magazine                        

                         “Beyond Sectarian Violence: Socioeconomic Challenges for Copts in Egypt,”
                          Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

2021                 “The Great History of Small Things,” Contingent Magazine

                          “El Pueblo de Dios: Latino Evangelicals and Christian Zionism,” The Revealer

                          “How I Met My Mother (and Billy Graham),” The Revealer

2020                “Some Textbooks Still Parrot Donald Trump’s Skewed Version of U.S. History,”
                           Washington Post

                           “American Protestantism’s Commodification of the Middle East’s ‘Holy Lands,’”
                            Sojourners

                           “In the Garden of Eden with Shakira,” Sojourners

 2019                 “Ramy Kamel, Mada Masr, and Seeing Coptic Issues as Civil Liberties in Egypt,”
                            Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy

                           “What the Taming of Christian Spaces Reveals about Egypt’s Security
                            Complex,” Jadaliyya

                           “El Salvador’s Bukele at Crossroads in Relations with Ancestral Land,”
                            Palestine Square

Spring 2024: HIST138: History of the Modern Middle East (Santa Barbara City College)

Winter 2024: HIST46MI: Modern Iran and Global Politics

Spring 2022: Archives of Memory and Forgetting in the Middle East (Cairo, Egypt)

Summer 2021: MES 45: Introduction to Middle East Studies

Spring 2021: HIST 46A: Premodern Middle East

Fall 2020: HIST 46B: Modern Middle East

Spring 2020: HIST 4C: Modern Europe

Winter 2020: HIST 46A: Premodern Middle East

Fall 2019: HIST 56 – Introduction to Mexican History

Spring 2019: HIST 56 – Introduction to Mexican History

  • Interdisciplinary Humanities Council Graduate Dissertation Fellowship 2023-24
  • Fordham University, Orthodox Christian Studies Center’s Coptic Fellowship 2022-23
  • Bemis Dissertation Research Grant, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) 2021-22
  • American Society of Church History (ASCH) Research Fellowship for 2021-22
  • Steve and Barbara Mendell Graduate Fellowship in Cultural Literacy 2021-22
  • American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) Dissertation Research Fellowship 2021-22
  • Orfalea Center Graduate Fellow, 2020-22
  • Borchard European Studies Fellowship, 2020-21
  • History Associates Fellowship, Spring 2020
  • Center for Middle East Studies, Research Grant, Summer 2019
  • Steven Hay Scholarship Award, Spring 2019
  • History Associates Fellowship, Spring 2019
  • Yale Center for Race, Indigenous, and Transnational Migration Research Fellowship, Cairo, Summer 2017
  • Foreign Languages and Area Studies Fellowship Finalist (FLAS) in Arabic at Yale University, Summer 2017
  • Critical Languages Scholarship (CLS) in Arabic at Yale University in Oman, Summer 2017
  • Oral History Fellowship,Yale University, Fall 2016
  • Foreign Languages and Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS), Arabic Language Institute in Fez, Morocco, Summer 2016