W@TC - The Battle for Cairo's Future: The New Administrative Capital and Ahmed Naji's 'Using Life'

Karly Alderfer is a sixth-year PhD candidate in the Literature program. Her dissertation is focused on imaginaries of Cairo's urban future in literature, as well as state-sponsored and alternative urban planning. Her research brings together the fields of media theory, Global South urban studies, and Middle East cultural studies.

In this talk, Karly Alderfer will present some of her research into contemporary Egyptian literature and urbanism. Delving into the rationale behind the building of Egypt's New Administrative Capital in the desert east of Cairo, this talk will explore how planning for Cairo's future is imagined as a battle between the forces of informal and formal urbanism. But will this battle lead to the possibility of a more just urbanism? By reading Ahmed Naji's 2015 novel Using Life, the talk concludes that this battle leaves us at an impasse and offers an alternative framework for the relationship between formal and informal urbanism.

This event will be hybrid. Registration is required to join via Zoom. Lunch will be provided from Neomonde Cafe & Market.