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October 29, 2008
Metropolitan State University of Denver
Month-long trek to Egypt inspires profs
A four-hour trek up Mt. Sinai to see the sunrise is just one of the personal activities that a Metro State professor experienced when she traveled on a month-long research trip to Egypt in July.
For her research project, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art Christine Dupont-Patz studied Coptic Churches in Egypt, both old and new. “I documented where early Christians had left carvings on ancient Egyptian temples,” says Dupont-Patz, who is already integrating these images and experiences into her curriculum. “They don’t need (this information) just for class, but for cultural awareness. In this day and age it would be irresponsible to not teach about Islamic art.”
Dupont-Patz was among four Metro State faculty members and nine teachers from the Jefferson County School District who participated in the seminar under a Group Project Abroad Fulbright award. It’s the sixth Fulbright award secured by Metro State Interim Executive Director of International Studies Ali Thobhani. The longtime faculty member has secured similar Fulbright programs for the College since 1985: two to Kenya, one to Ghana and two others to Egypt.
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(l to r) Allison Cotton, Paul Sidelko, Ali Thobhani, Arlene Sgoutas and Christine Dupont-Patz. |
“This is a fantastic opportunity for institutions of higher education to partner with K-12 schools to enhance the educational background and expertise of teachers and faculty in the area of international studies,” says Thobhani, who also serves as interim chair of the Department of African and African American Studies. “For some participants, these experiences become life changing and make them more dedicated to the profession of teaching.”
“In the end, it is the students who benefit a lot by having teachers and faculty who are well informed and experienced in their subject matters,” Thobhani adds.
For Dupont-Patz, the teaching does not stop in the classroom. She also plans to provide some of her images to the Auraria Visual Resources Collection, which is curated by Michael Palamara.
“It’s invaluable research for all faculty and students to have access to these images via the Web,” says Palamara. “To have it especially tied to an instructor’s perspective is great. Often we have generic photos, but this is the instructor creating the photographs and correlating them to what she wants the students to see and what she wants to teach.”
Other research conducted on the trip surrounded Napoleon Bonaparte’s expedition to Egypt in 1798, images of women in today’s advertisements and female genital mutilation.
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Dupont-Patz describes this image of Temple of Luxor as “culture on top of culture.” |
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology Allison Cotton produced a project called “Deviant Women in Egypt: Refusing to be Mutilated.” It is a pictorial display of women and girls who have undergone clitoridectomy and/or infibulation in Egypt, accompanied by a discussion of the practice of female circumcision and Egypt’s recent ban on the practice because girls have died as a result of undergoing these procedures. Cotton will be presenting her research on Nov. 13 at the American Society of Criminology conference in St. Louis.
For her individual project, Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies Arlene Sgoutas “chose to examine the commercial images of Egyptian and Muslim women to trace the stories and narratives that shape women's identity in Egypt. I then wanted to see how these stories reflected the realities of women's lives in modern Egyptian society.”
But she discovered more about how women engaged in political and collective action and its effect in changing the role and status of women in Egyptian society. “The women I met on the trip were not the ‘victims’ of male oppression that we often see in Western media, but rather active agents in resistance movements,” adds Sgoutas, who presented her research in September to the International Studies Association–West Conference in San Francisco.
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When he wasn't camel riding, Paul Sidelko studied Egyptian architecture and Napoleon's 1798 invasion of the country. |
Assistant Professor of History Paul Sidelko, who teaches World History, Islamic History and the Modern Middle East, worked on a few research projects. “The first project involved Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. I read his memoirs of the expedition and also studied the massive ‘Description de l'Egypte’ that was produced by a team of scholars who accompanied the French Army,” says Sidelko.
For his second project, he photographed buildings and architecture of medieval Cairo from the 11th to 15th centuries and plans to use them in his Islamic History course. Additionally, he studied the modern political system in Egypt and the possible successors to President Hosni Mubarak. He plans to present a paper on the latter at the Midwest Political Science Association National Conference to be held in Chicago, April 2009.
