Sherry Sayed Gadelrab is a PhD candidate at the University of Exeter (Ph.D. expected 2011). She holds a Masters and Bachelors degree from the American University in Cairo. Her recent publications include:
Her thesis examines examines the impact of the shift in the medical understanding of the differences between male and female bodies on the construction of gender and sexuality in nineteenth-century Egypt. The study begins by exploring how medical authorities in medieval Islamic society understood and analyzed Greek authorities' opinions on the the differences between males and female and their mutual contributions to the process of reproduction, arguing that that these thinkers' interpretations of sex differences were both complex and divergent, reflecting and contributing to the social and cultural constructs of gender. Although medieval interpretations of sex differences implicitly or explicitly emphasized the inferiority of the female body and mind, the plurality and complexity of ideas about sex differences and the acceptance of the flexibility of barriers between the sexes make it difficult to assume that the biological knowledge about sex differences formed a unitary ideological foundation for a system of gender hierarchy.