Mounira Gamal Soliman 2B, 199 Street, Degla, Maadi , (202) 275- 45516 (20122) 327- 0854 E-mail: [email protected]

Education:

• Ph.D. Comparative Literature, 2002, Cairo University, Egypt. Magic Realism in Contemporary African and African American Fiction.

• MA, English and Comparative Literature, 1993, The American University in Cairo, Egypt. Title of dissertation: Salome between Oscar Wilde and Mohamed Salmawy: An Intertextual Approach.

• B.A, English literature, 1989, Cairo University, Egypt.

Work Experience:

• 2012- Visiting Associate Professor, Department of English and Comparative Literature, The American University in Cairo.

• 2008- Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University. Specialization: Comparative Literature.

• 2010-2011 Assistant director of the Regular Program, English Studies Division, School of Continuing Education, American University in Cairo.

• 2010, Academic Program Consultant of the Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminar: “A Chat on the with Egyptians” July 9 - August 10, Cairo, Egypt. Coordinating the academic, cultural, and curricular components of the seminar, and participating in the pre-departure orientation in Washington D.C.

• 2008, Fulbright Senior Specialist at Yale University, Macmillan Center, Council on Middle East Studies. Conducting an outreach program “Direct Access to the Muslim World”.

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• 2007, Consultant to the Education Reform Project (USAID funded project), Cairo, Egypt. Developing English Language Tests for the Teachers’ cadre of the Ministry of Education.

• 2007, Academic Program Consultant of the Fulbright-Hays Summer Seminar: Egypt in the Eyes of Egyptians July 3-22, Cairo, Egypt. Coordinating the academic, cultural, and curricular components of the seminar, and participating in the pre-departure orientation in Washington D.C.

• 2005, Fulbright Visiting Scholar at New York University, TISCH School of the Arts, Department of Art and Public Policy. Conducting research on minority discourse and identity politics in the works of Arab American and Jewish American writers.

• 2002-2008, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University.

• 2004, Academic Coordinator of the first American Studies Regional Conference “Developing American Studies in the Arab Universities: Research, Resources and Outreach”, January 24-26, Cairo, Egypt and co-editor of the proceedings.

• 2003, Consultant to The Integrated English Language Program II (USAID funded project), Cairo, Egypt. Preparing a handbook on how to use videoconference as a teacher-training medium for the Ministry of Education.

• 1993-2002, Assistant Lecturer, Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, Egypt. Teaching introductory literature courses to undergraduate students.

• 1999-2000, Coordinator of the Gender Sensitive Fairytales Project Rewriting Workshops and Storytelling Events in , Women & Memory Forum, Cairo, Egypt. Also an active member of the writing workshops and the storytelling performances.

Publications:

Books:

• Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook, co- edited with Walid El Hamamsy. Routledge, 2013.

• Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Democracy, co-translated into Arabic with Walid El Hamamsy. Saqi Books, London & Beirut, 2011.

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• Egyptian Women Artists, with Hoda El Saadi. Women and Memory Forum, Cairo, Egypt. 2008.

• Developing American Studies at Arab Universities: Resources, Research and Outreach. American Studies Regional Conference Proceedings, Cairo, Egypt, 2004. Co-edited with Christopher Wise.

Book Chapters and Articles:

• “The Reception of U.S. Discourse on the Egyptian Revolution: Between the Popular and the Official” in Shifting Borders: American Studies Between the American Century and the Arab Spring, co-edited by Alex Lubin and Marwan Kraidy, University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2014.

• “Egyptian Women between Art and Activism” Forthcoming in “Ideology and Art” Singapore Middle East Papers, Middle East Institute, National University of Singapore, forthcoming 2014.

• “The Aesthetics of Revolution: Popular Creativity and the Egyptian Spring” in Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook. Ed. Walid El Hamamsy and Mounira Soliman. London & New York: Routledge, 2013. 246-59.

• “The (Un)wanted American: A Visual Reading of Arab and Muslim Americans” Journal of American Studies 34:2, November 2011, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea.

• “Representations: Children’s Literatures: Egypt” Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures, Online Edition published by Koninklijke Brill N.V. 2011.

• “Artistic Interpretations of Downtown Cairo” Journal of Postcolonial Writing 47:4, September 2011.

• “Palestine ← America → Israel: A Reading of America’s Role through Political Cartoons” CASAR Third International Conference Proceedings: Connections and Ruptures: America and the Middle East, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, July 2011.

• “The Image of America in Egyptian Cinema: A Socio-political Reading” CASAR Second International Conference Proceedings: Liberty and Justice: America and the Middle East, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, December 2008.

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• “The Arab Child Between East and West: A Reading of Al Shamshun, ‘Alam

Simsim, and Bakkar”. Alif: A Journal of Comparative Literature 27, 2007. In Arabic.

• “Ethnic(-)American: With or Without the Hyphen” CASAR First International Conference Proceedings: America in the Middle East, The Middle East in America, American University of Beirut, Lebanon, October 2006.

• Book review of Writing off the Beaten Track: Reflections on the Meaning of Travel and Culture in the Middle East by Judith Caesar. Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World 4, 2006.

• “From Past to Present and Future: The Regenerative Spirit of the Abiku Phenomenon”. Alif: A Journal of Comparative Literature 24, 2004 & republished in Contemporary Literary Criticism, 223, June 2006.

• “Computer Enhanced Learning in the Egyptian Classroom” in Anthony Fitzpatrick (Ed.), Information and Communications Technologies in the Teaching and Learning of Foreign Languages: State of the Art, Needs and Perspectives, a UNESCO publication, 2004.

• “Teaching Literature Online”. Tesol International Conference Proceedings, Baltimore, 2003.

• The Cleverest Girl: A Children’s Story. Cairo: The Women & Memory Forum, 2002 (published in Arabic).

Presentations:

• “Youth Culture and the Remaking of the City” Geographies of Negligence: Neighborhood Cultures, Popular Activism, and Citizenship in the Arab Region, Forum for the Study of Popular Culture & University of Kent, Cairo, Egypt. May 2014.

• “Reclaiming the Square: Popular Culture and the Reconfiguration of Public Space” 7th International Conference on Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa, Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane, Morocco. April 2014.

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• “The Adventures of Khalid and Bassem in Central Park: A Century of Arab Encounters with America” CASAR Fifth International Conference: Transnational American Studies, American University of Beirut, Lebanon. January 2014.

• “The Political is Artistic: Women and the Revolution” Universita di Napoli “L’Orientale” Workshop Voices of Protest: Engaging Political Power in North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Naples, Italy. September 2013.

• “Egyptian National Songs: Between Two Revolutions” Changing the Tune: Popular Music and Politics in the 21st Century from the Fall of Communism to the Arab Spring, Strasbourg, France. June 2013. The presentation will be developed into an article entitled “The National Song and the Arab Revolution” (in Arabic) forthcoming in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, issue number 35.

• Book Talk on Popular Culture in the Middle East and North Africa: A Postcolonial Outlook, The Politics and Practice of American Studies in the Middle East, Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR), Cairo, Egypt. April 2013.

• “American Studies in Egypt” Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Arab Spring and its Implications for American Studies in Arab Universities, Marrakech, Morocco. December 2012.

• “New Wine in Old Bottles: American Studies Before and After the Egyptian Revolution” American Studies Association Annual Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico. November 2012. Joint presentation with Maha El Said.

• “Call and Response: Slogans of the Egyptian Revolution” Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, Washington DC, USA. December 2011. . • “Translating Revolution: Artistic Representations of the Egyptian Spring” The Clifford Symposium 2011: (Re)Presenting National and Cultural Identities in the Middle East: Analysis, Journalism, and the Arts. Middlebury College, U.S.A. September 2011. Joint presentation with Walid El Hamamsy.

• “Bringing Jefferson to Tahrir” Teaching Literature and Linguistics in Egyptian Universities after the January Revolution: New Perspectives, New Challenges, Faculty of Education, , Egypt. May 2011. Joint presentation with Walid El-Hamamsy.

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• “Equal Rights Equal Opportunities – Progress for All: Arab Women 15 years after Beijing” The United Nations, Department of Public Information, Non-Governmental Organizations, New York, USA. March 2010.

• “Women’s History in an Activist Agenda: Reclaiming Memory” The United Nations, Fifty Fourth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, New York, USA. March 2010.

• “From Mothers to Daughters: Stories of Empowerment” Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, Boston, USA. November 2009.

• “Approaching the ‘Other’: Egyptian Reflections on the Obama Elections”, Information Resource Center, The American Embassy in Egypt. February 2009.

• "Reading Beyond the Veil: Prominent Women in Islamic History" Public Lecture, Johnson County Community College, Kansas City, USA. April 2008.

• "The Representation of Islam in the Writings of Arab Women" Public Lecture, Johnson County Community College, Kansas City, USA. April 2008.

• “American Studies in the Middle East” Panel Discussion, CASAR Second International Conference, Liberty and Justice: America and the Middle East, American University of Beirut, Lebanon. January 2008.

• “Women in America: Activists & Writers” Information Resource Center, The American Embassy in Egypt. March 2007.

• “The Politics of Translation: Arabic Literature in Translation” Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, Boston, USA. November 2006.

• “Gender Studies at Middle East Universities” A Summer Institute at Dartmouth College: Gendered Intersections: Feminist Scholarship in Islamic and Judaic Studies, Dartmouth, USA. August 2005.

• “Between and a Hard Place: American Studies in the Middle East”. American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Atlanta, USA, November 2004 & Middle East Studies Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, USA, November 2004.

• “Technology and English Language Teaching in Egypt”. Egyptesol 4th Annual Conference, Egypt, December 2003. With Inas Barsoum, Liz England and Reem

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Atter. Reporting the findings of a joint research project on “Technology and English Language Teaching in Tertiary ”. The research project was funded by The American University in Cairo.

• “Politics, Technology and Literature in Developing Countries”. IATEFL Special Interest Groups Symposium, Istanbul, Turkey, September 2002. A revised version of the presentation was given at Egyptesol 3rd Annual Conference, Cairo, Egypt. December 2002.

Professional Activities:

• Member of the International Advisory Board of the Center for American Studies and Research at the American University in Beirut http://www.aub.edu.lb/fas/casar/Pages/index.aspx

• Co-organized the Graduate Student Conference Initiative between the Department of English and Comparative Literature at AUC and the English Department at Alexandria University 2013-2014.

• Member of the Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) AUC-AUB Collaboration 2012-2013.

• Member of the Organizing Committee for a joint conference between the University of Manchester, Cairo University, and the Women and Memory Forum: “Narrating the Arab Spring: New questions, New Modes of Resistance and Activism, and New Politics”, Cairo, Egypt. February 18-20, 2012.

• Co-organized a conference with the University of Kent: “Days of Rage: Popular

Imagination and a Middle East in the Making”, Kent, U.K. January 28-29, 2012.

• Member of the Academic Organizing Committee for The Binational Fulbright Commission in Egypt 60th Anniversary Conference “Exchange Inspires Change: How

Information Exchange Can Lead to a Better Future” November 2009.

• Gender Training Workshop - Pathways for Women's Empowerment Project, Ahfad University, , January 2008. The workshop was a collaborative project between the American University in Cairo & the Women and Memory Foundation. A three- day workshop, training Sudanese artists and writers in rewriting folktales and stories from a gender-sensitive perspective.

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• Member of the organizing committee of The Symposium on Comparative Literature – Cairo University, Egypt, 1992-.2008

• Founder and Coordinator of the American Studies Alumni Circle, The Binational Fulbright Commission in Egypt, 2006-

Professional Memberships:

• American Studies Association http://www.theasa.net/ • Middle East Studies Association http://www.mesa.arizona.edu/ • Women and Memory Forum http://www.wmf.org.eg/

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