Her first book, Composing Egypt: Reading, Writing, and the Emergence of a Modern Nation (Stanford University Press, 2016), is based on the research she conducted as an ARCE Fellow [2007-2008]. In this work she argues that literacy and its practices fundamentally altered the social fabric of Egypt at the turn of the twentieth century. Composing Egypt illustrates how reading and writing practices became not only an object of social reform, but also a central medium for public exchange, allowing wide segments of society to engage with new ideas about nationalism, education, gender, and, ultimately, what it meant to be part of "modern Egypt." http://fandm.academia.edu/HodaYousef