Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė. "‘The High Art Unites Us’: Staging Unity Through Honoring in Cairo’s Literary Clubs." Middle East Critique (2025): 1-16.
Giedrė Šabasevičiūtė, Ph.D.
AREAS OF INTEREST
- Sociology of artistic professions
- Materiality of literary worlds (cultural palaces, writing media, books, etc.)
- Social classes
- Decolonial history of the Middle East, sociology of intellectuals
EDUCATION
- 2015 Ph.D., Sociology, EHESS (Paris) – dissertation “Du littéraire au religieux en passant par le politique. Une trajectoire d’engagement intellectuel en contexte révolutionnaire. Le cas de Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966)”
- 2008 MA, Sociology (EHESS, Paris)
- 2006 BA, Arabic and Arabic literature (Sorbonne IV, Paris)
- 2004 BA, Etnology (Vilnius University)
ACADEMIC CAREER
- since 2015 – researcher, Oriental Institute of the CAS
- 2017 (November-December) – internship, Berlin Graduate School of Muslim Cultures and Societies.
- 2015 – lecturer, Vilnius University, Vilnius; Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas (Lithuania)
- 2011-2013 – PhD. student, CEDEJ (Cairo)
AWARDS:
- 2022 – The Award of the CAS for outstanding results of great scientific significance for the book Sayyid Qutb. An Intellectual Biography (2021: Syracuse University Press).
BOOK TALKS AND BOOK REVIEWS:
- Interview with Jadaliyya (New Texts Out): https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/43847 (EN) and https://www.jadaliyya.com/Details/44269 (AR)
- University of Oslo, Middle East Studies: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTvfL0-sjuA&ab_channel=SIMSOSLO
- IREMAM (Aix-en-Province): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8YNJOu6G88Us-e3U81d28g
RESEARCH NETWORK:
- since 2022: Professionalization in the arts in Europe and the Middle East. A research cooperation between Oriental Institute, IREMAM (Aix-en-Province) and University Paris 8 (Paris).
- since 2020: EGYCLASS, CNRS IRN, CEDEJ. Research network dedicated to the study of social class in Egypt. Co-coordination of a research axis “Egyptian elites”.
- since 2019: Power and Strategies of Social and Political Order. Contribution with a research project “Writing Fiction in Cairo: Gender, Class, and Cultural Bureaucracy.”
EDITORIAL BOARD:
- since 2020 - Member of the editorial board of the journal Egypt, Soudan, Mondes Arabes (ESMA) published by CEDEJ (Cairo).
- since 2020 - Co-editor of the scientific section of the ESMA journal "Sources and Documents."
CONFERENCES (since 2017)
- 2024. “In the Cracks of the Welfare State. Midlife and Literary Self-Reinvention in Cairo”, ZMO Seminar, Berin, Germany, May 24.
- 2023: “Writers, Not Civil Servants. Running Culture Palaces in Cairo”, MESA, Montreal, Canada, November 2.
- 2023: "Cultural Life in the Cracks of the Projects. The Development of Culture Palaces under Nasser and al-Sisi." The BRISMES Conference, Exeter, UK, 3-5 July.
- 2022: “The Currency of Literature”: Writers and the Practice of Takrim in Cairo’s Literary Clubs”, Cultural Capital and Class Recognition, CEDEJ, 9 November, Cairo.
- 2022: "L’Etat se retire : La fabrication du « chez soi littéraire » au sein des Palais de la culture au Caire", Forum Insaniyyat, 22 September, Tunis.
- 2022: “Out of Place: Class Aspirations and Mobilities among Contemporary Egyptian Fiction Writers”, SeSaMO Italia, Naples, June 23.
- 2022: “Born Again Readers. Women and the Rediscovery of Reading at Midlife in Cairo”, AGYA workshop, Cairo, April 6.
- 2021: "Subverting the Institutional Work. Cairo's Literary Clubs and the Practice of Takrim (Honoring)", MESA, December 1 (online).
- "High Art Unites Us. Dealing with Political Divisions in Cairo’s Literary Clubs", MESA, Nouveau Orleans, United States of America, November 16.
- 2019: "Fantasies of Housewives. Women Writers and the Cultural Milieu in Cairo", Beyond Text. Anthropological Approaches to Literature, L’Institut Oriental, Prague, October 17.
- 2018: "A Reflection of the Soul: the Method for Islamic Literature in Sayyid and Muhammad Qutbs' Writings", WOCMES 2018, Sevilla, Spain, July 17.
- "The People vs. Sayyid Qutb: The Media Campaigns in 1954, 1965 and 2013", the 25th Annual Congress of Davo, Frankfurt, Germany, October 4.
- "Translating the 1919 Uprising in Egypt: Between Local and Transnational Intellectual Fields", 5th European Congress of World and Global History, Budapest, Hungary, September 2.
ACADEMIC WORK
2024 May – Visiting scholar in Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO), Berlin.
