American University in Cairo

This course examines the analytical object "violence" in its differentiated dimensions. What we think of as violence encompasses multiple phenomena that cannot only be understood as forces of destruction: violence must be grasped as also generative of life-worlds. The course inquires into the nature of violence, explores its epistemological and existential, sensual and structural, exceptional and ordinary dimensions, and forms.

This course introduce the theories and the tools that attempt to explain the emergence, trajectories, and outcomes of social movements. It covers the basic processes by which societies initiate, consolidate, transform, and change their basic institutions and social structures and provides an anatomy of reform and revolutionary social movements, especially those affecting Arab and Third World societies. It examines a variety of case studies of social movements during the 20th century and discusses some of the case studies of the recent wave of uprisings in the Arab World. The course encourages students to think critically about how social movements emerge, sustain themselves, feel, think, achieve their goals or/and decline.

This course is for private lessons in Arab Voice. It involves twelve one-hour lessons in the semester. Students are expected to practice a minimum of one hour every day. Students perform before a jury of teachers for the final examination. Students may register for more than one section of MUSC 1800 in the same semester. 
 

This course locates marriage as a key historical arena where politics and economics intersect. It examines how men and women imagine their nation through marriage and understand their rights and duties in 20th-century Egypt. It demonstrates how marriage is a lens that reflects and critiques larger socioeconomic and political issues. This course provides a history of marriage and nationalism in modern Egypt, rather than just a legal, political, or women’s history. It also contributes to our historical understanding of the marriage crisis, which continues to dominate public debates.

This course introduces scholarship, debates, methods, and professional trends in the field of literary studies, considering questions of theory, application, interdisciplinary, and textuality. It trains students in the methods used to conduct literary research in their papers and theses, giving careful attention to library resources and academic style. Thie seminar explores questions of who Indigenous peoples are, what Indigeneity is, and where Indigenous nations exist. It addresses these questions by reading a wide range of theory in the field of Indigenous Studies from around the world and also taking a look at some creative work. The course develops a comprehensive understanding of colonization and decolonization and incorporates that understanding into individual areas of study. 

This course covers the history of Cairo with an emphasis on social, political, and economic developments in the twentieth century.

This course introduces urban studies in the Middle East, drawing on textual, visual, and collaborative resources to critically explore contemporary urban life in the region. It situates the region within broader discussions on the global “urban age,” an era where purportedly half of the world’s growing population lives and works in cities. The course explores the structural and everyday forces and actors—states, people, culture, nature, wars, and disasters—that shape and connect cities across the region. It draws on debates and methodologies in urban sociology, political economy, and anthropology. The course blends theory and practice through collaborative, experiential methods such as urban diary writing, visual ethnography, and field visits.

This course offers a study of selected topics in advanced Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. It introduces students to the spoken Arabic of Cairo and concentrates on enabling students to communicate effectively in daily life. It targets high-frequency vocabulary and social situations and emphasizes pronunciation.

The course explores various aspects of cinema in Egypt and the Arab World in order to understand its history and determine the themes, styles, and character of this cinema which has been historically among the most influential in national world cinemas. It covers selected films by a number of auteurs from Egypt, Lebanon, and Palestine. Special attention is paid to form and style, as well as recurrent themes; for example, the civil war and Israeli invasions in the case of Lebanon, and the Israeli occupation in the case of Palestine. Additional topics include areas such as New Arab Cinemas, classical Egyptian cinema, the Arab film industry, and independent Arab cinema.

This intermediate Arabic course increases the command of grammatical and syntactical structure of modern standard Arabic through reading materials, and develops reading and writing skills and comprehension. It offers a critical examination of social and cultural dimensions of reading materials. This is the first course in a three-semester sequence of Intermediate Arabic.