Courses
310 courses since 2014
What we cover at CILAS matters less than what a student discovers.
310 courses
- 101
Vocabularies of Grief
As the world slowly attempts to emerge from the shadow of COVID-19, we find ourselves still trying to navigate living within waves of loss. None of us, it seems, have been left untouched by the turmoil of the past few years - and yet, life continues, as it always has. In the a…
View course - 102
The Modern and the Mediterranean: The Age of Enlightenment in Europe and the Middle East
One might say that the Enlightenment changed everything. It is credited with fashioning the intellectual foundations of modernity, bringing reason and science to the forefront of public life, hastening the end of the ancien regime, pioneering constitutional government, sparkin…
View course - 103
CITY & CINEMA
City and the cinema have always been interlinked. While the cinema represents an image of the city, its people and spaces, it simultaneously plays a major role in the production of its space. The relation between the city and the Egyptian cinema, dates to its early days. When…
View course - 104
What is the State? An anthropological inquiry
The question of what is the ‘State’ and how it operates has always been central to social sciences as much as the state itself has been central to living in modern societies. Social scientists, activists and radicals have for decades disagreed widely on the nature, role, and e…
View course - 105
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 - 106
Reading Films: A Rudimentary Guide to Cinema and the Moving Image
Have you ever watched a film and couldn’t describe how you felt because of it? Did a film ever leave you in awe? When watching a film, do you leave your mind at home, or does the film make you more and more conscious of your cognitive processes? Does reality inspire films, or…
View course - 107
Other Worlds are Possible: Quotidian Prefigurations
The concept of prefiguration encapsulates the project of creating a new or alternative society from within the current configuration of the world. Prefiguration functions as a theory in action, or the creation of an otherwise or alternative world that emerges from how one live…
View course - 108
- 109
The Death of the Political?
Saramago’s (2006) Seeing, offers a precise visualization of the current political plight that number of scholars have noticed and predicted. In an imagined country, during counting the ballots of the general elections, the city administrators found out that the populace have s…
View course - 110
PLAY THE CITY! - The case of Historic Cairo
Over the last few years, technological developments have allowed new possibilities for fostering civic participation and engagement, as testified by various smart city experiments. In this framework, game elements are diffusely mobilized in order to develop responsible and act…
View course - 111
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 - 112
Making the Strange Familiar & the Familiar Strange
Investigating the Social behind Spirituality and the Unseen through Anthropological Fieldwork
View course - 113
On Stupidity: The Trouble with Systematic Thinking
Flaubert said “Stupidity lies in wanting to draw a conclusion.” By this he meant any attempt to reach a conclusion stops the act of thinking when there remains something to be thought. Qualifying something as systematic also points to providing a framework that can explain pro…
View course - 114
The Space Lab: Navigating the Larger African Urban World
What kind of urban lives are in Africa? The question, on the face of it, is a poignant one. The common assumptions prevail that Africa is a rural continent. African cities exemplify a truncated modernization. This Space Lab engages debates in urban studies with a focus on Afri…
View course - 115
مختبر الترجمة الثامن: ترجمة العلوم الاجتماعية والفلسفة
يمثل هذا المختبر مساحة للتجريب في نقل المعرفة المنتجة أكاديميًا الصادرة بلغات أجنبية في مجالي الفلسفة والعلوم الاجتماعية. ثمة صعوبات وتحديات كثيرة تحيط بترجمة النصوص النظرية النقدية إلى اللغة العربية، ومن ثم تدعو ورشة ترجمة الفلسفة والعلوم الاجتماعية المهتمين بالترجمة النظرية…
View course - 116
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 - 117
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 - 118
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 - 119
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 - 120
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…
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