Book presentation: "Cairo Collages"

1 February 2021, 5:00 p.m.
Virtual event

On 1 February 2021, Mona Abaza (American University in Cairo) will present her latest book "Cairo Collages" at ZMO - Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient.
In Cairo collages, the large-scale political, economic, and social changes in Egypt brought on by the 2011 revolution are set against the declining fortunes of a single apartment building in a specific Cairo neighbourhood. The violence in Tahrir Square and Mohamed Mahmud Street; the post-January euphoric moment; the increasing militarisation of urban life; the flourishing of dystopian novels set in Cairo; the neo-liberal imaginaries of Dubai and Singapore as global models; gentrification and evictions in poor neighbourhoods; the forthcoming new administrative capital for Egypt – all are narrated in parallel to the ‘little’ story of the adventures and misfortunes of everyday interactions in a middle-class building in the neighbourhood of Doqi.

Mona Abaza was born in Egypt and obtained her PhD in 1990 in sociology from the University of Bielefeld, Germany. Currently, she is Professor of Sociology at the American University in Cairo. In 2014, she was a Research Fellow, at Morphomata Institute, Köln. From2009 to 2011, she was a visiting Professor of Islamology, department of Theology, at Lund University. She was also a visiting scholar in Singapore at the Institute for South East Asian Studies (ISEAS) from 1990-1992, in Kuala Lumpur from 1995-96, in Paris (EHESS) in 1994, in Berlin (Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg 1996-97), in Leiden (IIAS, 2002-2003), in Wassenaar (NIAS, 2006-2007) and Bellagio (Rockefeller Foundation 2005). Her booksinclude "Cairo Collage. Everyday Life Practices After the Event" (Manchester University Press 20209, "The Cotton Plantation remembered" (American University in Cairo Press 2013) and "Twentieth Century Egyptian Art:  The Private Collection of Sherwet Shafei" (The American University Press, 2011).

The book presentation is organised in cooperation with Nawara.

The event will be held via Zoom. Please register at registration@zmo.de.