Deborah Starr is an Associate Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. Her writings on Modern Arabic and Hebrew Literature and Film explore the notions of the cosmopolitan and the Levantine—two terms that have been used to describe the urban, inter-communal contact between and among the diverse cultures of the Middle East. She is the author of Remembering Cosmopolitan Egypt: Literature, Culture, and Empire (Routledge, 2009). She is also the co-editor, with Sasson Somekh, of Mongrels or Marvels: The Levantine Writings of Jacqueline Shohet Kahanoff (Stanford University Press, 2011). This talk is taken from her current book project, Togo Mizrahi, Agent of Exchange: Nationality, Jewishness, and Gender in Egyptian Cinema 1930-1946.