| This dissertation explores education as a critical yet hitherto neglected site for the construction of multiple, parallel, and occasionally competing narratives of national identity in Beirut, Lebanon. Spanning the period of the French mandate (1920-1943) and early decades of independence (1943-1960s), this project demonstrates that the issues of language, history and geography, gender, citizenship, and the professionalization of education were central axes around which students, teachers, administrators, and government officials negotiated, accommodated, and subverted different claims to the new nation-state.;In so doing, this project also draws on particular schools as windows through which to examine the larger diverse landscape: al-Ahliyya School, the Magasid Islamic Benevolent Society, and College Protestant Francais. Primary sources used include the schools' archives, textbooks, annual reports, student essays, mandate and state records, memoirs, correspondence on a wide variety of topics, as well as elements of the press and oral history narratives. |
