Current Fellows

Jonathan Guyer on Egyptian Surrealism

  • April 20, 2017
  • ICWA

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, ICWA fellow Jonathan Guyer has published a review essay on the resurgent interest in Egypt’s little-known Surrealist movement, co-authored with  American University in Cairo Professor Surti Singh. In “The Double Game of Egyptian Surrealism: How to Curate a Revolutionary Movement,”  Guyer and Singh consider the legacy and enduring relevance of

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Remembering Alexandria’s Visionary

  • April 15, 2017
  • Jonathan Guyer

In my first piece for the New York Times, I write an homage to the great Alexandrian scholar Mostafa el-Abbadi, who passed away in February. Several obituaries of el-Abbadi appeared in Egyptian newspapers, but most merely consisted of his curriculum vitae. No remembrance captured his colorful disposition and feisty erudition, let alone his ambivalent relationship

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Jessica Reilly Selected to Present at International Conference

  • April 14, 2017
  • ICWA

As an ICWA Fellow, Jessica Reilly sailed around Latin America collecting stories and testimony about the effect on climate change. With the knowledge gained from her fellowship, ICWA is thrilled to announce that she has been selected as to present at the Resilience 2017 conference in Stockholm, Sweeden. The Resilience conference is one of the

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BLOG: International Women’s Day 2017: Taking Bold Steps for Change

  • April 5, 2017
  • Onyinye Edeh

Messages and Reactions From Nigeria On March 8, the world celebrated International Women’s Day (IWD), a day set aside to acknowledge the contributions women make in society and highlight the challenges women continue to face. This year, the United Nation’s theme “Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030” urged action to

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Rich Country, Poor People: Life on the Rural Panamanian Coast

  • March 28, 2017
  • Jessica Reilly

“Panama is NOT a developing country.” The young sailor leans back in her chair in the tranquil courtyard of the marina. “They’ve got all the money from the canal. People are doing alright here.” A root-choked path filled often with thigh-high mud leads from our spot in the marina to an indigenous village less than

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Do Whales Like it Hot?

  • February 28, 2017
  • Jessica Reilly

I’m at the bottom of the ocean, and I hear singing. I can’t see them, but their voices are clear, like a bird calling in the night. I wait motionless on the sand bottom under twenty feet of water as reef fish dart around me. I’m listening for whales. The sounds I hear are not

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Jonathan Guyer Published in Rolling Stone

  • February 28, 2017
  • Jonathan Guyer

Drawing on research from his ICWA Fellowship, Fellow Jonathan Guyer’s current feature in Rolling Stone explains how a young Egyptian writer ended up on the wrong side of the law. “Inside the Strange Saga of a Cairo Novelist Imprisoned for Obscenity” investigates the case of Ahmed Naji, a thirty-year-old writer whose struggle reveals the state of culture, law

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Twice as Hard for Half the Credit

  • February 23, 2017
  • Jonthon Coulson

A year ago, the Walikota [mayor] of Banda Aceh made headlines by declaring Valentine’s Day haram [forbidden]. “Many Muslim youth in Banda Aceh are sending Valentine’s day greetings via social media. And it is the responsibility of the city government to ensure this does not happen again…Muslim youth should certainly not be celebrating non-Islamic culture,”

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At the Cairo Book Fair

  • February 14, 2017
  • Jonathan Guyer

“Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, and Baghdad reads,” goes the adage. At the Cairo International Book Fair, where hundreds of publishers and thousands of readers gather each winter, everybody writes, publishes, and reads. While the sclerotic institutions of state-funded culture remain conservative forces with an outsized role in Egyptian letters, independent publishers continue to push the

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The (Dis)Harmonies of Islam

  • January 25, 2017
  • Jonthon Coulson

Like any other spiritual or human endeavor, Islam is a plurality resounding in harmonies and, at times, disharmonies. I began learning about this faith and its people as a college freshman in 2001. As a journalism student at the University of Missouri, I was asked to reflect critically on media packages that paired footage of

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