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DISCOURSEs, Languages,
and cultural studies
For most of the 20th century, Egypt has been the dominant player in the Arab cultural field. Buoyed by its demographics and the intellectual vigor of its elites, Cairo produced a wealth of modern literary and critical discourses, pictorial arts, music and theater as well as a wide range of productions in Arab radio and cinema. Egypt exported its cultural model and its dialect to the Arabic-speaking world. This hegemony has now partly faded. A major challenge for a nation located in a region already marginalized on the global cultural scene is how to maintain or save what remains from its former regional dominance. The third decade of the 21st century confirms political, social and cultural disenchantment in the Arab world’s most populous country. To study the ideological, religious, cultural and artistic discourses produced by Egypt, however, is not to take an interest in a has-been whose regional influence, centrality and inescapability are memories of the past. The Mother of the World remains one of the main centers of production and consumption of post-modern and post-colonial Arab culture.
This line of research combines cultural and literary studies, sociolinguistics and musicology, and approaches Egypt through its rich and diverse discursive productions.
It is within this framework that CEDEJ’s Music Studies are pursued, with the Music & Sound Webinar and the Aswat concerts.
Also linked to this research axis is CEDEJ’s participation in the SELICMA seminar on contemporary Arab literature.