Fulbright series promotes Arab-American academic dialogue
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Courtesy of ISSO |
The international student services office (ISSO) at the American University in Cairo (AUC), in collaboration with the Fulbright Commission, is hosting the last of a three-part panel discussion series on April 7 on Agricultural Trade Liberalization.
The discussion, to take place at 11 a.m. in the Blue Room, will feature Adel Beshai, an economics professor at AUC, and Jacinto Fabiosa, co-director of the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute (FARI) at Iowa State University.
The three-part series is designed to provide cross-cultural perspectives on journalism, Arabic literature and economics.
“Fulbright is a bi-national [American-British] educational and cultural organization that enhances understanding and collobaration between peoples of Egypt and the United States,” said Safaa Abbadi, a manager for alumni affairs and special projects in the Fulbright organization in Egypt.
The second panel of the series, which discussed the problems and challenges in the teaching of modern Arabic, took place on March 31 in Oriental Hall with the participation of AUC faculty and Fulbright scholars.
Samia Mahrez, an AUC professor in the department of Arab and Islamic civilizations; Christopher Stone, a Fulbright scholar and associate professor at the City University of New York and Areeg Ibrahim, a Fulbright alumnus and assistant professor of comparative literature at Helwan University, spoke about the challenges of teaching Arabic literature in both American and Egyptian universities.
Reflecting a cross-cultural perspective of teaching Arabic literature, Stone discussed his teaching experiences at American universities, Mahrez her experience at AUC and Ibrahim gave a comparative perspective from her experience in both the US and Egypt,
“[Teaching Arabic literature] on the surface is a small issue, but it raises and relates to so many issues like colonialism, the politics of translation and cultural literacy,”said Stone.
Mahrez’s talk focused on the polarized views of the students in AUC classes as a result of their different educational backgrounds.
“[The discussion] was very useful; I found Stone’s example of intersection of politics and translation interesting. The field of translating Arabic is very discriminatory,” said Brian Loo, an Arabic language student at AUC.
According to Dina Wafa, assistant manager of academic services at the ISSO, the panels have been successful in providing an opportunity for students to be exposed to different views.
“We chose updated topics in all our lectures to be [of] interest [to] international students,” said Wafa.
The first panel, held on March 19, which discussed the differences between Arab and American journalism, featured talks by Hussein Amin, professor and chair of the journalism and mass communication (JMC) department at AUC; Kenneth J.Cooper, a freelance jouranlist and Pulitzer Prize winner and Olfa Gamal El Din Tantawi, a reporter and director of the Egyptian Satellite Channel.
“The panel showed the different perspectives. The speakers knew what they were talking about. We need more of these,” said Shaheen Pasha, a JRMC professor at AUC.
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