Writing the Self

Sessions without a date

• 1On the Feminism of Life WritingWeek 12 materials

  In the first week, we aim to familiarize ourselves and interact with our writing experiences about ourselves. We also aim to introduce self-writing. We will read Dr. Hala Kamal's text "From 'Autobiography' to 'Life Writing'" and engage with the feminism of self-writing. We will also read an excerpt from Ibrahim Aslan's book.

  • هالة كمال. "من "السيرة الذاتية" إلى "كتابة الحياة"". ألف: مجلة البلاغة المقارنة. عدد 40.
  • جزءًا من كتاب إبراهيم أصلان
• 2About our daily tripsWeek 21 material

  We will continue reading Ibrahim Aslan in the second week, focusing on our daily journeys: to work, to university, to Cilas. We will focus on what we see and what sees us, and how we see those scenes. We will write about our daily journeys, discussing their details and what it means to see the same scene through different eyes. We will talk about the romance and seriousness of the details, and the big issues behind the small scenes.

  • إبراهيم أصلان
• 3Field visitExerciseField TripWeek 3

  We will walk around and interact with Cairo, taking time out to write down what's happening and also rest. We will practice rewriting what we see through each other's eyes and discuss how this changes what we saw the first time we wrote. In exercises, we will play a game in which we interact with each other's writing, completing and rewriting what we see. We will also use our walk to prepare for future sessions.

  In class

  • Field visitسنتجول ونتفاعل مع القاهرة، ونأخذ أوقاتًا مستقطعة لنكتب ماذا يحدث، وأيضًا نرتاح.
  • Exerciseفي تدريبات هذا اليوم سنلعب لعبة نتفاعل فيها مع كتابات بعضنا البعض، نستكمل فيها ما نراه، ونعيد كتابته.
• 4Family HouseWeek 41 material

  We will begin the second part of this lab by reading selected excerpts from Fatima Qandil's Empty Cages, and begin our discussions about the privacy of our writing and our comfort in sharing it with any stranger. We will also write about the homes in which we were raised. We will practice describing the things we cling to and our relationships with homes as spaces of reassurance, fear, and negotiation of our existence.

  • أقفاص فارغةفاطمة قنديل. در الكتب خان. 2021.
• 5ExerciseJournalingWeek 5

  This week, we will explore our past experiences with journaling, how it makes us feel, and what we discover about ourselves while writing. We will also discuss the role diaries traditionally play in literature and media, and attempt to understand the feminist role of this type of writing. We will begin by playing a journaling game. This game aims to imagine diary writing and place us in other cloaks from which to write

  In class

  • Exerciseسنبدأ بلعب لعبة لكتابة اليوميات.
• 6Write a letter to your French friend.Week 62 materials

  We'll explore our personal/family archives and the letters they might contain. We'll discuss what we reveal about ourselves in letters, and our etiquette when writing such things. We'll read "An Email from Osama El-Danasouri" from Iman Mersal's "Until I Give Up on the Idea of Houses" and a portion of Nesma Joueili's "The Legacy of the Story." We'll also bring a letter from our personal/family archives to the lab. We'll experiment with who reads what we write, and try to track ourselves by changing the "sender/recipient" in our letters.

  • "ايميل من أسامة الدناصوري" في ديوان إيمان مرسال حتى أتخلى عن فكرة البيوت
  • إرث الحكايةنسمة جويلي. دار الشروق. 2014. (جزء من الكتاب)
• 7We are things?Week 71 material

  We will begin the third and final part of this lab by reading a book Object-oriented feminism. We will discuss becoming objects in the global capitalist system, and our relationship to the objects in our lives. This week will be a good opportunity to challenge our traditional notions of self.

  • Object-oriented feminismKatherine Behar, ed. University of Minnesota Press, 2016
• 8My Cheap Precious ThingsWeek 81 material

  This week, we will engage with our personal physical archives and the toys and belongings we have protected since our childhood. We will discuss in-depth our relationship with these objects, one of which we will choose to be our guest in the session. We will read selections from Hossam Fakhr's collection: "Mother of Feeling" and discuss the narrator's relationship with his objects. This week, we will practice writing in the language of objects and embodying their imagined voices.

  • أم الشعورحسام فخر. مختارات فصول. 1988.
• 9Paper, Computer, and TypewriterWeek 9

  This week, we will discuss the tools we write with, our relationship with them, and how this changes our self-expression. We will also write about our relationship with what we've written after we've written it. We will also reflect on our tour of Cairo and the materials we learned from it.

• 10DiscussionWhy did we write what we wrote?Week 10

  The final week of this lab will be a free discussion session about what we did in this lab and what we learned while writing, about writing, and about ourselves. We will also discuss the sustainability of the activities we started in the lab and how to turn them into habits. We will also discuss our thoughts on sharing what we wrote in the lab outside of it.

  In class

  • Discussionسيكون الأسبوع الأخير من هذا المعمل جلسة نقاش حرة حول ما فعلناه في هذا المعمل، وما تعلمناه في أثناء الكتابة وعنها وعن ذواتنا.