Courses
310 courses since 2014
What we cover at CILAS matters less than what a student discovers.
165 courses
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Medical Anthropology and Doing Social Research: Amplifying Voices and Putting Theory into Practice
This course introduces students to the field of medical anthropology, exploring its historical and contemporary approaches. Students will gain an understanding of the social and cultural determinants of health and illness, and how to conduct person-centered social research. Th…
View course - 23
Dionysus and the Devil: Occultism, Witchcraft, and other “mysteries”
Between the autumn of 1996 and the spring of 1997, Egypt witnessed a “Satanic panic.” The allegation that Heavy Metal concerts served as a cover up for Satanist rituals soon turned into a moral scare followed by a wave of arrests—and by an iconically nonsensical set of televis…
View course - 24
تاريخ المحاكم الشرعية في النصف الأول من القرن العشرين
تقدم هذه الدورة فرصة للتعرف على تاريخ المحاكم الشرعية التي كانت موجودة في مصر حتى منتصف القرن العشرين، بوصفها مدخلا هاما لاستكشاف جوانب مختلفة من الحياة الاجتماعية والثقافية والسياسية في مصر خلال هذه الفترة الهامة. وتستخدم هذه الدورة تقنية تفاعلية لدراسة عدة نماذج من قضايا الم…
View course - 25
Keys to read Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazali
Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111), known by the honorific title, the “Proof of Islam,” was one of the foremost scholars and authorities in the Muslim world. The epistemology of a paradigmatic figure like al-Ghazālī is central to Islamic intellectual thought, but also speaks to ou…
View course - 26
The Anthropology of Music
How is music related to people’s identities and beliefs, and how does sound shape people’s sense of place and belonging? How does music-making connect to broader social, cultural and economic processes? In this course we will explore varied global musical styles, including Se…
View course - 27
Meaningful Conversations with the Prophets
Who cares if Jonah was inside a whale? What does it matter than Cain killed Abe? Why did Adam eat from the tree? Are these just historical stories for bedtime? This class is an exploration of the methodology of reading prophetic stories in the Quran. We will be using the metho…
View course - 28
Magic and Modernity: The Spell of Our Structures
The course will challenge the conventional notion of equating modernity with disenchantment, through looking at the ways in which the secular and the sacred go hand in hand. We will examine how reason does not eliminate “superstition" but piggybacks upon it; chance and serendi…
View course - 29
Inhabit: Belonging to Bodies and Lands
Inhabit is an online course that will examine eco-feminist and indigenous feminist perspectives on body, land, and home through texts from multiple genres and disciplines, and from different communities across the world. Through collective discussions, writing, and engaging wi…
View course - 30
Everything You Wanted to Know About Climate Change But Were Afraid to Ask
Understanding a world systems problem as complex, multilayered, and fundamentally chaotic as climate change may seem a tall order. Even so, it appears to be a civic duty for those of us concerned about the fate of the earth, our species, and the biosphere over the next century…
View course - 31
Being Displaced in the City: An Anthropological Approach
This course uses ethnographic texts to study the contemporary experience of displacement in cities. Studies of the refugee experience often assume the refugee camp as the quintessential space of displacement, while migration studies assumes as its object of study “economic” mi…
View course - 32
Approaching Performativity and Culture in Modern Egypt
This course considers how culture is constituted as an object of analysis. By working to connect cultural commodities, artifacts, artisanal crafts, and other literal objects, with literary and historical representations of and by twentieth century Egyptian cultural icons, (Tah…
View course - 33
Making the Strange Familiar & the Familiar Strange
Investigating the Social behind Spirituality and the Unseen through Anthropological Fieldwork
View course - 34
اللغة والحِجاج القانوني في مشاهد المحاكمات في السينما المصرية - نظرة على السخرية
إذا كان المفترض بالقانون أن يكون تعبيرًا عن اتفاق اجتماعي، فكيف تكون ممارسته اللغوية مغلقةً إلى درجة أن تصير حِكرًا على أهلها؟ وإذا كان القانون في النهاية حقلًا لغويًا خاصًا، فما مكان لغته من الممارسة اللغوية العامة؟ أليست المحاكمة هنا بما فيها من حجاج بين المجتمع والقانون هي…
View course - 35
Power, Public Feelings, and Popular Culture
Is Marwan Pablo’s Denamet a treatise on alienation? Can we read Mohamad Samy’s notorious Ramadan series Nasl il Aghrab as a critical commentary on the befuddled nature of contemporary power? This course is an invitation to engage with the social worlds we inhabit through the…
View course - 36
Muddying Waters: Race, Class and Gender
This seminar examines the topical feminism on-the-ground within an intersectional framework of race, class and gender. It unpacks “women’s question” in a fluid time and space. Through tracing the complexities in representation, culture, economic subjugation and colonial power…
View course - 37
In Love with Music? Journey in the world of Music
This course offers a musical analytical journey around some parts of the world. As we travel sonically from one place to another, we will try to culturally, politically, and spiritually contextualize the music, beats and instruments. We will do a lot of in-class music analysis…
View course - 38
Contesting the visual/visible: the image as critical and creative method
A growing number of contemporary theorists and artists ask us to question our understanding of art history and the material conditions of image-making by rejecting the singular narrative presented to us through western modernity. As an exploratory course that bridges critical…
View course - 39
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The Social Under our skin. Who Else is in our Body?
This course put forth the body as a methodology to understand critical and complex social realities. Looking at the body and embodiment, this course aims to anthropologically understand what is under our skin? By asking this question we sophisticate our relationship with “our”…
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