The Department of English and Comparative Literature (ECLT) in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences recognized three students at the 2014 Madalyn Lamont Literary Award ceremony for the most creative writing pieces in English. The Madalyn Lamont Literary Award was started in 1986 in memory of Madalyn Lamont, an instructor in the writing program, a poet and a women’s rights activist. The awared recognizes students with creative skills in narrative, poetry and drama writing. 

Lara Ahmed, Reham Abouelwafa and Bara Elhag are the three award winners for the 2014 Madalyn Lamont Literary Award, coming from different backgrounds but with a common passion for creative writing. “This award serves as a kind of motivation for me to write more,” said Ahmed, who submitted a short story titled "The Ventriloquist" about a man working a mundane job. A writer for the AUC Times, Ahmed believes that AUC consists of a lot of creative outlets, in terms of clubs, workshops, competitions and award ceremonies that help nurture and hone students’ creative writing skills. Ahmed is a freshman student at AUC, who is yet to declare a major.

Abouelwafa, the second award winner, is studying business administration with a concentration in marketing and a minor in digital media. In her junior year at AUC, Abouelwafa was rather surprised, yet extremely happy, to have won the award. “It feels great to get credit for something I really love doing, and it is a great opportunity to turn a hobby into something bigger,” said Abouelwafa, who submitted a short comic story about a magical refrigerator that grants you superhuman speed. “The only glitch is that you have to carry the refrigerator with you at all times, making it completely useless,” she explained. Abouelwafa has participated in several extracurricular activities on campus, and she is currently on an internship program at AUC’s Career Center, working as a graphic designer. Abouelwafa is putting together a portfolio of all her work so she can become an animator and perhaps open her own animation studio one day.

The third award winner, Bara Hatem Elhag, is a freshman student pursuing a degree in biology, but who enjoys an endless love for writing. “The story of winning third place is still surreal to me until now. I didn’t believe there was a chance for me getting past the nomination stage,” said Elhag, whose paper is about a fragile, old, frightened woman who believes there is a killer in her cellar. Elhag is currently applying for a summer internship at the Naval Medical Research Unit 3 (NAMRU-3), a biomedical research laboratory of the US Navy located in Cairo. According to Elhag, “AUC offers many venues for students to explore and display their talent, whether it be through exciting talent shows, or brilliantly constructed music practice rooms in the Center for the Arts, or, of course, something like the Madalyn Lamont Literary Award ceremony.” In addition to pursuing her passion for writing, Elhag hopes to work in medicine and “be the most beneficial world citizen I can be.”

The Madalyn Lamont Literary Award invites influential female speakers every year during the award ceremony held in the spring. This year, the guest speaker was Hoda Elsadda, chair in the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Manchester. Elsadda serves as co-director of the Center for the Advanced Study of the Arab World (CASAW) in the UK, associate editor of the online edition of the Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, member of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund for Women, member of the Advisory Board of the Durham Modern Languages Series, and Core Group Member of the Arab Families Working Group. Elsadda is also the co-founder and current chairperson of the Board of Trustees of the Women and Memory Forum.

List of Previous Distinguished Women Speakers
Leyla Doss, Egyptian activist
Suaad al-Sabah, Kuwaiti poet
Mona Amyuni, Lebanese professor of comparative literature
Mohsina Tawfiq, Egyptian actress
Arundhati Ghose, Indian ambassador
Shahira Mehrez, Egyptian designer
Doris Shoukri, professor of English and comparative literature at AUC

Language is often viewed as simply a means of communication, a tool for giving directions, delivering speeches or meeting people. But according to Reem Bassiouney, associate professor of applied linguistics, language is not just a way to communicate, but a principal means of expressing one’s identity, particularly during times of conflict.

“Language is at the core of who we are,” Bassiouney said. “It could be a classifying category for defining us, such as describing Egyptians as people who speak Arabic. But language can also be a way of expressing who we are.”

In her recent book, Language and Identity in Modern Egypt, Bassiouney argues that language is used in Egyptian public discourse to create a particular collective identity. By studying a variety of sources such as patriotic songs, films, blogs, TV talk shows, newspaper articles and novels from the 20th century until June 30, 2013, Bassiouney found that language plays an essential role in constructing an identity, essentially labeling who is an “authentic Egyptian” and who is not. “The main aim of constructing a distinct identity is to decide who is included and who is excluded from this large community called ‘Egyptians,’” Bassiouney explained. “Variables like language, ethnicity, locality, character traits and moral dispositions are criteria for inclusion and exclusion. There were numerous examples in this book of what I term an ‘exclusion-inclusion pattern of display’ by individuals in public discourse. This is defined as a pattern in which individuals display their stance of belonging or not belonging to a community, and also display their stance toward other individuals as belonging or not belonging to a community and nation. Individuals use social variables, including language, in this pattern of display.” To illustrate this point, Bassiouney noted how, during the January 25 Revolution, some loyalists tried to make the claim that the protestors in Tahrir Square were not real Egyptians because many spoke in English and were, thus, deemed as “not Egyptian” or “not representative of real Egyptians.” This rationale, she said, is steeped in social attitudes toward the English language. “While Egyptians rush to master English and teach it to their children, when someone is depicted as speaking English, his or her Egyptian identity is contested,” she explained. The revolutionaries, in turn, claimed that they were authentically Egyptian because of their command of the Arabic language, again showing how language expresses identity. Bassiouney pointed to the example of the Egyptian poet al-Jukh, who recited a poem on the Abu Dhabi television program, The Prince of Poets, using Standard Arabic, not Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, to “authenticate the identity of the Egyptians in Tahrir Square.” “I have now spoken,” he said. “My language is not English, and it is not even Egyptian Colloquial Arabic. It is the authoritative Standard Arabic, with all its powerful indexes.” Bassiouney argues that Standard Arabic is oftentimes associated with the Quran, Islamic jurisprudence and civil law so it connotes legitimacy. Because of this context, the poet employs Standard Arabic as an indicator for authentic Egyptian identity. “The poet al-Jukh had to use Standard Arabic to prove that the protestors were true to their cause and to Egypt,” Bassiouney said. “Through this poem, the revolutionaries in Egypt used language to show that they are indeed ‘real Egyptians.’” This, Bassiouney noted, is because language contains certain indexes, or connotations. Given certain contexts, Standard Arabic is often associated with legitimacy, Egyptian Colloquial Arabic is used to index authenticity, while an Egyptian speaking in English may connote respect or suspicion, she said. This concept extends beyond just code choice and even applies to smaller details, like the type of grammar used. For example, Bassiouney found that in several patriotic songs, the singers often use the third person pronoun (he, she, it or they), instead of the second person pronoun (you), to refer to a colonizer or an aggressive outsider. This was the case in Misr Tatahadath ’An Nafsiha (Egypt Speaks About Itself) by Umm Kulthum, when Egypt refers to colonizers in the third person plural, or in the case of the song Habibti ya Masr (Egypt, My Love) by Shadia, in which the person who does not understand Egyptians is referred to in the third person singular. “In my view, this manipulation of pronouns is intentional and intends to undermine the aggressive, unfriendly, unsympathetic outsider, while appealing to the insider or sympathetic outsider,” Bassiouney affirmed. “In that sense, even the use of certain grammatical constructs expresses who the real Egyptian is and who is the ‘other.’ This way, linguistic resources are employed to index attitudes and ideologies through a stance-taking process.” Bassiouney hopes that this research will provide non-Egyptians with a deeper understanding of the perspectives and actions of Egyptians. “It’s important for outsiders to know about public discourse in Egypt because sometimes for an outsider, you can sound aggressive or snobbish if you don’t understand the context of a discourse of any country,” Bassiouney explained. “When you do, you are then able to understand why people are behaving the way they do and why they are making these decisions. It becomes easier to deal with people. My hope, on a broader sense, is that this research will facilitate communication between people from different cultures. It’s important for Egyptians to think about how they learn everything. You know who you are, but it’s good to know the mechanism about how you reached ‘who you are.’”

Scholars typically study modernity in Egypt in the 19th century, when Muhammad Ali, who is widely regarded as the founder of modern Egypt, made significant reforms in the military, economic, educational and cultural spheres. Less studied is what came before: the 18th century. Examining this period in Egyptian history, the Annual History Seminar, organized by the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, will discuss the theme, “Before the Modern, After the Medieval: Egypt and the Middle East in the 18th Century.” The event will be held from March 28 to 29 in Oriental Hall, AUC Tahrir Square.

“Historians of Egypt have, for years, researched the events and transformations that occurred in the country throughout the 19th century,” said Amina Elbendary, assistant professor of Arab and Islamic civilizations. “And even though much debate has occurred over periodization, all concur that this century witnessed the transformation to modernity in Egypt and the Middle East in general. This year’s Annual History Seminar aims to study the 18th century in the history of Egypt — and other provinces of the Middle East/Ottoman Empire — from the perspective of early modernity and the late middle ages. It aims to ask the question of where it is that the 18th century fits in this narrative of the birth of the modern? Did Egypt in the 18th century belong to the medieval world? Or was it part of the early modern world?”

Participants include professors from AUC, Cairo University, Misr International University, New York University and France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique. The papers to be presented discuss the 18-century transition to modernity in the Middle East through topics as diversified as diplomatic treaties of the late Mamluk period, intellectual history during the early modern period, changing city life, development of guild histories, changing concepts of time and the spread of clocks, literary developments and new genres, and intellectual interactions during the French occupation of Egypt.

Established in the early 1990s, the Annual History Seminar initially served graduate students at the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations, but has since expanded to include young historians from national universities throughout Egypt. The event also attracts European, American and Japanese scholars residing in Cairo who are keen on expanding their research and knowledge.

“During the two-day seminar, young scholars, often including graduate students, have a chance to present and receive feedback on their research, engage in discussions with faculty from various universities within Egypt and abroad, and expand their intellectual horizons,” said Elbendary. “The seminar encourages a multidisciplinary approach to the study of Egyptian and Arab history through a focus on literary analysis and revisions of social, economic and cultural histories.”

For the full program,click here. For inquiries, email [email protected].

Photo courtesy of the Rare Books and Special Collections Library and Archives