Events

With the generous support of the Cleveland H. Dodge Foundation, the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations hosts the annual Bayard Dodge Distinguished Visiting Professorship in Arabic Studies.

The Annual History Seminar started in the early nineties on a small and informal scale within our department and aimed at our own students.  Eventually, it expanded and targeted young historians from the national universities in Egypt.

The events aim at discussing, in an informal and welcoming setting, many of the issues and themes of Arab and Islamic studies that are also of relevance to contemporary Arab and Egyptian society. These talks are aimed at the AUC community at large, especially students and faculty from other disciplines.

The Arabic Cultural Program aims to invite local intellectuals, academics, and artists for discussions on topical and controversial issues. The events, held in Arabic, are intended for a broad, general public and organized two or three times a year at the Tahrir Square Campus. In the past, the program has hosted distinguished figures including the grand mufti of Egypt and the late journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.

In September 2019, the American University in Cairo’s Tahrir campus witnessed another memorable academic event. A three-day conference on Inscriptions from the Islamic World brought together leading scholars in the fields of Islamic history, art, and architecture from all over the world to Cairo to celebrate the different disciplines of Islamic epigraphy.

In August 2018, the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations  organized a Summer School in Kavala, Greece in coordination with Koc University, Turkey. Students from AUC and Koc U finished two intensive courses in Digital Humanities and Museology and went on field trips to the Ottoman sites in Kavala. The sessions were held at the Imaret Mehmet Ali, a waqf building established by Mohamed Ali Pasha, Egypt’s ruler in the first half of the 19th century.