American University in Cairo

This course explores the various techniques and concepts of ceramics, with an emphasis on basic skills and crafts of clay. The course includes introductory information and experiments in clay free-hand technique related to ceramics arts, starting from making building techniques, glazing techniques, and kiln firing operations. The course introduces ceramic art history and its long-term cultural traditions, as well as contemporary ceramics concepts and ceramics installation arts. It has a minimum of two filed trips to Fustat, an ancient ceramics area in old Cairo, to explore the historical and local craft of ceramic art and Egypt's social history in relation to the field.

This course offers a study of selected topics in high intermediate modern standard Arabic. It emphasizes vocabulary acquisition and increases the command of grammatical and syntactical structures. It further enhances the four language skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) through the use of authentic materials that enhance Arabic language competence. The course provides an opportunity to expand the vocabulary and grammar pool and develop both oral and written production through different tasks like presentations based on readings).

Beginning with the Young Turk and Iran’s Constitutional revolutions, this course follows the fate of Middle Eastern societies and states during the twentieth century, with a special focus on colonialism and nationalism; independence movements and decolonization; the Arab-Israeli conflict; society, politics, and culture. It focuses on the social, political, and intellectual history of this period to better understand the genealogy of trends and events that dominate our present time.

This course mainly investigates questions and problems related to theories of human nature and ethics and their interconnectedness. It covers works by key figures in the Classical and Post-Classical periods of Islamic Philosophy including Avicenna, Averroes, Ibn ‘Arabi, al-Ījī and al-Dawwānī, and by figures in Modern and Enlightenment philosophy including Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel. Among the main themes the course tackles is the relationship between mind and body and its implications for understanding good and evil as ethical categories in the two traditions, examining the convergences and divergences among them. Methodologically, the class combines both a thematic approach focusing on the main themes in philosophy of mind and its connection with key ethical problems with a historical approach investigating the historical development of these themes and their moral implications. This course is offered to both graduate and undergraduate students with distinct assessment requirements for each; this represents the undergraduate version of the course. 

This course considers the relationship between philosophical reflection and aesthetic practice through the lens of cinema, with the purpose of engaging students of both philosophy and film theory in a cross-disciplinary investigation into cinema. The course draws both from philosophical texts on film, and classical and contemporary film theory. Topics may include epistemological, ontological, and ethical questions about film; the role of memory, subjectivity, identity, and desire in cinema; time, space, and the nature of the image; perspectives on sexuality, gender, and race in film; psychoanalytic, feminist, and postcolonial film theory; and analytic and continental approaches to film and philosophy. This course is offered to both graduate and undergraduate students with distinct assessment requirements for each; this represents the graduate version of the course. 

This course provides a foundational understanding of international relations theories. It discusses how these theories are applied to cases throughout history, establishing a thorough knowledge of the explanatory capabilities and limits of each of the major theories. Prerequisites include introductory coursework in political science and international politics. 

This course is a survey of the architectural output of the Islamic world from from Spain to Indonesia from the 7th century to the present. It presents major examples of religious and secular architecture, including mosques, madrasas, palaces, and caravanserais and offers an insight into different Islamic dynastic styles in their respective geographic territories beginning with the Umayyads in Syria and ending with the contemporary architecture. With the help of visual material and field trips, the course analyzes major monuments with the objective of arriving at an understanding of each dynasty’s contribution in the context of the continuous development that nurtured it. The course facilitates enjoyment of Islamic architecture, provides an understanding of how art historians think and argue with one another, and expands visual memory.

This course covers logic and philosophy of qualitative methodology in anthropology and other social sciences. The process of research design, data collection, analysis and interpretation of results and final write-up is elaborated with specific reference to research conducted in Egypt, the wider Arab and Middle Eastern worlds, and elsewhere. The course also discusses the politics and ethics of fieldwork, including protection of the rights of human participants in research projects.

This course offers in-depth analysis and discussion concerning key texts from the history of aesthetics and addresses current debates in aesthetic theory. Issues covered include the beautiful and the sublime, classicism and romanticism, tragedy and the absurd, modernism and post-modernity.

This course investigates the nineteenth-century roots of contemporary issues in the middle east. It introduces the issues, actors, and processes that have shaped the post-Ottoman region and its neighbors during the past two centuries. The course surveys broad trends in the evolution of the Ottoman Sultanate during the nineteenth century, then focus on themes for discussion and analysis. It also examines the Ottoman state, the diverse communities that made up the empire, and the great powers that surrounded it. The course attends to political, military, economic, social, and cultural developments, attempting to understand historical breaks and continuities that continue to affect the region today. Finally, it critiques analytical categories (nation, class, faith, and gender) while relating them to concrete case studies and asking whether they are relevant to different societies.