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Moral Blackface and ‘The Nubian Part’: The Grammars of Race and Gender in Egyptian Comedy
by
Tue, Nov 3, 2026
5 PM – 6:30 PM (GMT+2)
Ted and Sarah Bacon Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Egyptology Meeting Room
AUC Avenue, P.O. Box 74, New Cairo, 11835, Egypt
Details
The acclaimed anthropologist Mary Douglas argued that jokers are “ritual purifiers” who manage society’s anxieties around boundaries, taboos and violations. In this talk, Associate Professor Ramy Aly of AUC’s Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology examines how the representation of Nubians and Sudanese in four celebrated turn-of-the-century comedies dramatizes the separation between Egyptians and Africans, and how cinematic ritual purifies Egyptianness from its own Africanness and Blackness. Never far from “amused racial contempt” is a cinematic male gaze with explicit anxieties around Egyptian womanhood, interracial sex and miscegenation. Aly revisits the work of Ahmed Amin and Youssef Idriss on the relationship between humor and Egyptian cultural identity, arguing that amused racial contempt and misogyny should be recognized as part of what Idriss celebrates as the “sarcastic consciousness” of the Egyptian people. Through cinematic semiotics and production culture, the talk illustrates how the grammars of racial contempt and misogyny are made entertaining, family-friendly and profitable on screen.
Speakers
Ramy Aly
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology, The American University in Cairo
Ramy Aly joined the Anthropology program at The American University in Cairo (AUC) in 2013. Before coming to AUC, he was a lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Sussex, UK where he received his PhD in Social Anthropology in 2011. Aly's PhD research culminated in the publication of his first monograph, Becoming Arab in London: Performativity and the undoing of identity, in 2015 with Pluto Press as part of their celebrated Anthropology, Culture and Society Series. The book is the first ethnographic account of gender, race and class practices among British-born and raised Arabs in London and attempts to provide an account of the everyday experiences of Arabness in the British capital. He is also co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Middle Eastern Diasporas (2022).
He is currently engaged in two long-term research projects. The first explores the formation of ethical selves in the wake of the January revolution (2011). The second focuses on contemporary racial formations in Egypt by looking at the hair cultures of young Egyptians. Aly is a member of the Royal Anthropological Institute, UK, the European Association of Social Anthropology and The Society for Cultural Anthropology.
Aly supports students at AUC through his involvement with a number of writing initiatives. He is the chair of the Altorki Award for Ethnographic Research. He is also a co-founder of The Authors’ Challenge and has been the faculty advisor for the AUC Times.