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Thematic courses

Spring 2018, CairoThematic Course

Identity, Culture and Resistance

Identity, Culture and Resistance
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Course details

Cycle
Spring 2018, Cairo
Length
10 weeks
Taught in
English

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About the course

How does culture shape, reinforce and challenge individual and collective identities? How do power and hegemony operate within and through culture? What roles do culture and creative spaces play in maintaining, and more importantly, challenging hegemonic identities and politics? How are art and cultural productions tools of control, reflections of realities, responses to society and politics, and mediums of survival, negotiation, subversion, resistance and (re)imagination?

Employing intersectional feminist and cultural studies lenses, this interdisciplinary course aims to utilize art, creative production and cultural spaces to engage with themes about identity, such as language, gender, sexuality, nationalism, religion, race, desire, family and friendship. The course will be built on engagement with academic readings as well as creative sources from art and culture to explore these topics, with the underlying understanding that ‘text’ goes beyond written language and exists in all artifacts (oral storytelling, music, fashion, social media production, television (talent shows, talk shows, soap operas, game shows, mosalsalat), film, food, architecture, spoken word poetry, graffiti, photography, advertisements, and other mediums). Relying on lived realities, the self and the body, students will share their own experiences and bring in cultural artifacts and observations relevant to their lives as entry points to these discussions. The course aims to disrupt the hegemonic construction of knowledge production as belonging to singular academic theorists and thinkers, and instead centers the knowledge that every one brings to the space, while engaging in critical and creative reflections on this knowledge we each carry and produce.

The course will include various creative activities and students will be expected to present/share/submit a self-portrait and/or piece of creative resistance in whatever form they choose (written, spoken, song, dance, poetry, film, etc.) at the end of the course. Students will also be asked to reflect each week on how they personally relate to themes discussed in class through a visual or written ‘journal’.

Why Apply:

To situate yourself within culture and share your own experiences and artifacts as knowledge

To put academic text, cultural artifacts and personal experiences in dialogue with one another

To apply intersectional feminist approaches to analyses of cultural productions

To recognize the individual and collective significance of engaging with and critiquing cultural artifacts, and in utilizing creative resistance

The course is dedicated to the many cultural producers and artists negotiating and resisting through their work.

Who teaches it

  • Nadine El-Nabli is interested in the intersection between gender, sexuality and citizenship, as well as creative resistance in the Middle East and North Africa. She completed her M.A. in Gender & Sexuality at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and her dissertation engaged with feminist and queer analyses of the intersection of nation, resistance and music, with a focus on the Lebanese band Mashrou’ Leila. Nadine has also worked on various human rights and humanitarian research projects relating to gender, sexuality, refugees and violence. Other things Nadine spends her time doing are dancing, collecting videos and caring for her friends and family.

Course flow

Showing 10 sessions

Sessions without a date

  • Reviewing concepts students were exposed to in the first trimester: What is culture, hegemony, resistance? What is ‘text’? Where is politics? Where is the archive? Whose archive?

    Intersectional feminist and anti-racist approaches/Positionality

    How is culture significant in bridging between emotion and politics?

    Session will consist of icebreakers, activities and exercises to think about identity, positionality, the body and creative production.

    In class

    • ExerciseSession will consist of icebreakers, activities and exercises to think about identity, positionality, the body and creative production.

  • Language and power: Are some languages more valuable than others? Are some Arabics more valuable than others?

    Emotion and language

    Non-verbal language, visual language, body language

    • Queering the Mother TongueMourad, S. (2013), International Journal of Communication, vol 7, pp. 2533–2546.
    • Oral TraditionsWilliam Nu’utupu Giles & Travis T. (NPS 2015)
    • Minute on Indian EducationThomas Babington Macaulay (1835)
    • نحو “مصر بالعامية” أقرب لطفلكميراندا بشارة (2016). مدى مصر

  • Politics of dress codes/costumes

    Literal and figurative reproduction through physical performance and embodiment, respectability

    Abortion, disability

    • The revolution shall not pass through women’s bodies: Egypt, uprising and gender politicsHafez, S. (2014). The Journal of North African Studies 19(2), 172-185.
    • Femininity and Dance in Egypt: Embodiment and Meaning in al-Raqs al-BaladiRoushdy, N. (2010). Cairo Papers 32(3).
    • At the Seams: a Political History of Palestinian EmbroideryTalty, A. (2016). Reorient Magazine.
    • Faces and PhasesMuholi, Z. (2012). Transition 107, 112-114.

  • Orientalism: External representations historically

    Cultural imperialism: cultural productions used to justify violence

    Self-representations of this history

    Hierarchies of aesthetics

    • The Politics of Preservation: Privileging One Heritage over AnotherBell, J. S. (2013). International Journal of Cultural Property 20(4), 431-450.
    • Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism: The Struggle to Define and Control the Heritage of Arab Art in EgyptReid, D. M. (1992). International Journal of Middle East Studies, 24(1), 57-76.
    • Palestinian literature and film in postcolonial feminist perspectiveBall, A. (2012). New York, NY & London, UK: Routledge.
    • Orientalism in Film

  • Propaganda & National Anthems

    Performing nationalisms and their contradictions

    Exceptional threats of terrorism

    • Gender and nationYuval-Davis, N. (1998), in Women, Ethnicity and Nationalism: The Politics of Transition, ed. by Rick Wilford & Robert Miller. London & New York: Routledge, pp. 23-35.
    • Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of NationalismAnderson, B. (1983), London: Verso.
    • Violence and masculinity in Maroun Baghdadi’s Lebanese war filmsKhatib, L. (2007). Critical Arts 21(1), 68-85.
    • The (Little) Militia Man: Memory and Militarized Masculinity in LebanonHaugbolle, S. (2012). Journal of Middle East Women's Studies, Volume 8, Number 1, Winter 2012, pp. 115-139.
    • Arab Idol - Mohammed Assaf
    • 2011 protest chants/song

  • Black-Egyptian Identity

    Refugee Communities

    Internalized racism

    Portrayal of ‘Islamists’

    Coptic Christians: Oppression and resistance

    • سوداءهدى سالم. (2016). إختيار.
    • Nationalism and Otherness: The representation of Islamic fundamentalism in Egyptian filmKhatib, L. (2006). European Journal of Cultural Studies 9(1), 63-80.
    • Islamic Televangelism: Religion, Media and Visuality in Contemporary EgyptMoll, Y. (2010). Arab Media & Society 10.
    • Black Skin, White MasksFanon, F. (1952). Grove Press.
    • Black Skin, White Masks: Cinema Inspired by Frantz Fanon
    • Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution | Episode 4: Nada Zatouna

  • Mahraganat

    Architecture

    Street art

    Youth and Public Space

    Billboards and advertisements

  • Heteronormativity & Marriage

    Hierarchy of relationships (Reproductions)

    Relationality, Connectivity and Selving

    Interfaith and interracial relationships

    Love

    • خرابيش نسوية
    • Intimate Selving in Arab Families. Gender, Self, and IdentityJoseph, S. (1999). Syracuse University Press.
    • The privilege of revolution: Gender, class, space and affect in EgyptWinegar, J. (2012). Journal of the American Ethnological Society, 39 (1): 67-70.
    • Cairo Exit(2010)

  • Documenting women’s sexuality

    Queer Desire

    Silence and taboo around sexuality - use of metaphors

  • Joy as Resistance

    Students’ Projects

    In class

    • PresentationStudents’ Projects

Course reading list

  • Pop goes the Arab World: Popular music, gender, politics, and transnationalism in the Arab WorldAbdel-Nabi, S. et. al. (2004). Hawwa, 2(2), 231-254.
  • Cultural resistance readerDuncombe, S. (2002). London; New York: Verso.
  • Popular culture in the Arab World: Arts, politics, and the mediaHammond, A. (2007). Cairo, Egypt: The American University in Cairo Press.
  • Shifting Positionalities: Empirical Reflections on a Queer/Trans of Colour MethodologyHaritaworn, Jin (2008), in Sociological Research Online. 13 (1) [30.01.2014].
  • Resistance in contemporary Middle Eastern cultures: literature, cinema and musicLaachir, K & Talajooy, S. (2013). New York, NY: Routledge.
  • Feminist Methods in Social ResearchReinharz, S. (1992) New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Cultures of Resistance in Palestine and Beyond: On the Politics of Art, Aesthetics, and AffectSalih, R. & Richter-Devroe, S. (2014). Arab Studies Journal, XXII(1), 8-28.
  • Feminist Research Methodology – Making Meaning of Meaning-makingWickramasinghe, Maithree, (2010) London/New York: Routledge
  • Creative Reckonings: The politics of art and culture in contemporary EgyptWinegar, J. (2006). Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

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