As demonstrations and protests continue in Egypt, UCI’s Center for Global Peace and Conflict Studies and Department of Anthropology present an opportunity to gain perspective from in-house experts on elites, culture, politics and law in Egypt.

“Speaking Out on Egypt”
with UCI anthropologists
Julia Elyachar | Christine Hegel-Cantarella | Selim Shahine

Moderated by Cecelia Lynch, political science professor and CGPACS director and Karen Leonard, anthropology professor and acting department chair, UCI

Thursday, February 17, 2011
2:00-3:30 p.m.
Social Behavioral and Sciences Gateway (SBSG), Room 1517

Julia Elyachar is an assistant professor in UCI’s Department of Anthropology with a research specialty in the social, cultural, and political economy of urban Egypt. Her book, Markets of Dispossession: NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo, was a co-winner of the first book prize of the American Ethnological Association in 2007. She has published articles on Egypt in American Ethnologist, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Public Culture, and other journals in the United States and Europe.

Christine Hegel-Cantarella is an assistant research specialist in the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion at UCI.  Her research focuses on contracting, litigation, and court reform in contemporary Egypt, with a particular focus on Port Said.  Current publications include an article "Kin-to-Be: Betrothal, Legal Documents, and Reconfiguring Relational Obligations in Egypt" which appeared in the journal Law, Culture and the Humanities, and a chapter in the edited volume Islam: Women, Divorce and Marriage in the Middle East.

Selim H. Shahine is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Egyptian elites. He conducted ethnographic fieldwork among members of Egypt's former royal family who were deposed during the military coup d’état of 1952 that put the currently embattled regime in power.  Shahine received his Ph.D. in social science from UCI in 2006 and is currently a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology.

This event is free and open to the public.  Please RSVP to cgpacs@uci.edu.
 

Event Video

-video courtesy of UCI OpenCourseWare