CMLT 200 6 - Cairo Cosmopolitan

In the globalized Middle East of the twenty-first century, Cairo occupies a unique position as both a relic of a bygone era and a hotbed of political, cultural, and artistic activities that point to emergent contemporary forms of cosmopolitanism. This course offers a look at literary and cinematic representations of Cairo as both an iconic urban center steeped in nostalgia and a wellspring of what Diane Singerman and Paul Amar, in Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Globalized Middle East, have termed “vernacular, bottom-up cosmopolitanisms” or grass-roots visions of what a cosmopolitan city should embody. The literary works and films discussed in this course will range from wistful depictions of Cairo as Umm al-dunya (mother of the Earth) in the glory days of her Golden Age, to contemporary reflections on the city as a central player in the political, cultural, and demographic dynamics of the Middle East. The course will feature units on nostalgia, belle époque Cairo, the Egyptian Jewish diaspora, Cairo in the Israeli literary imagination, gender and cosmopolitics, and cosmopolitanism in the wake of the Arab Spring. Texts include Waguih Ghali’s postcolonial coming-of-age novel Beer in the Snooker Club, Nadia Kamel’s documentary film An Egyptian Salad, selected essays by the Jewish-Egyptian author Jacqueline Kahanoff, Lucette Lagnado’s memoir The Man in The White Sharkskin Suit, Mia Ghröndal’s photo collection Revolution Graffiti, and excerpts from Wael Ghonim’s memoir Revolution 2.0. (Group III) (Diversity, Writing Option)