Arab states, like other modern nation-states, produce visual representations of the nation that are often highly gendered; the imagining of nationhood seems to have a great deal to do with the imagining of femininity and masculinity. But representations of gender and nation in Arab countries do not follow a single formula, nor do they remain static over time. In Egypt, where the peasant population was always larger than the urban or nomadic populations, peasants were the chosen symbols of cultural authenticity from the earliest days of…