UT College of Liberal Arts

Full-Year Program

The CASA full-year program of study in both Cairo and Damascus includes three components: 1) the summer program, 2) the fall semester, and 3) the spring semester.

1. The Summer program (please note CASA no longer offers a summer only program)

The summer component of the Full-Year program is the same as the CASA Summer Program in both Cairo and Damascus.

The CASA I Summer Program typically runs from early June to late July/early August and features the following components:

The Academic Program
The Cultural Program
Service Learning (currently available in Cairo only).

1. The Summer Academic Program

The summer academic program in both CASA locations aims to provide the fellows with opportunities to explore Egypt and Syria and to immerse themselves in their new environments both linguistically and culturally. The program offers between 20 and 23 contact hours per week and fellows are expected to spend between four and five hours daily doing homework and preparing for class activities for the following day.

The summer academic program includes two courses:

i. Hadduta MaSriyya: A Course in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic OR Shaamiyyaat: A Course in Syrian Colloquial Arabic
This course offers 10-12 contact hours per week and aims to develop the fellows’ proficiency in the Egyptian or Syrian dialect quickly so that they can function in their new environments. In addition to focusing on the colloquial of daily life, the course places emphasis on cAammiyat al-Muthaqqafiin in which the colloquial is mixed with formal Arabic. Multiple sections of this course are offered to accommodate varying levels of proficiency.

ii. Egypt: Culture & Society OR Syria: Culture & Society
This course offers 8-10 contact hours per week and aims to engage students through language in a number of historical, political, social, and cultural issues of significance to the society in which they are living. The course is conducted entirely in Modern Standard Arabic and places emphasis on the development of all language skills with attention to expanding vocabulary and enhancing grammatical accuracy. Themes in this course include:

The Egyptian educational system, minorities in Egypt, honorifics, Egyptian nationalism, language of the youth, humor and jokes, the arts, etc,.
Women in Syrian Society, social issues in modern Syria, Syrian youth, literature, social customs and traditions, etc,.

2. The Summer Cultural Program

The main component of the CASA Summer Cultural Program in both locations is “Mishwaar wa Dardasha” “field trip and a chat,” an activity that takes place once a week and lasts between two to three hours. Each week, small groups (4-5) of CASA fellows are paired with an Egyptian/Syrian university student who acts as a guide and conversation partner for the group. Each group chooses a place of interest to visit in Cairo or Damascus, and the group visits the place and engages in a discussion of its historical and cultural significance with the Egyptian/Syrian partner. Discussions also extend to touch on various aspects of life in Egypt/Syria.

As part of the Summer 2007 Mishwaar wa Dardasha, the CASA fellows had the chance to experience the following with their conversation partners:

In Cairo: Nile falouka ride, visits to Sayyida Zeinab, Al-Azhar Park, Khaan al-Khalili, al-Fishaawi Coffee shop, and a movie viewing at a movie theater.

In Damascus: Visits to the Umayyad Mosque, Takiyya Sulaimaaniyya, Suuq Al-Hamiidiyya, Al-Nofrah Coffee shop, Sitt Zeinab Shrine, and the towns of Macluula and Siidnaaya.

The other component of the Summer Cultural Program consists of trips and excursions to various places in Egypt and Syria organized by the Arabic Language Institute (ALI) at the American University in Cairo and the Arabic Language Institute at the University of Damascus respectively. These trips are optional and the CASA fellows are welcome to join them at a cost. Among the trips that were offered in Summer 2007 were the following:

In Egypt: tours of Cairo, the Giza Plateau, Saqqara & Memphis, Coptic Cairo & the Old Cairo area, a two-day trip to Alexandria, tour of St. Catherine and Sharm El-Sheikh, and a trip to Abu Simbel, Aswan, and Luxor (Nile Cruise).

In Syria: Trips to Al Hosn Castle, Kasab And Foroluq, and Ogaret & Ras Shamra.

Applicants to CASA should note that the CASA summer curriculum cannot accommodate individual linguistic preferences and does not offer individual tutorials in any areas beyond the courses specified above. Students not interested in the study of Egyptian or Syrian Colloquial Arabic should consider whether CASA is appropriate for their needs before applying.

For more information regarding the Summer Program, please contact us. If you are interested in applying to the CASA program, please go to the "Applicants" section of the website.

The Fall Semester

The CASA fall-semester in both Cairo and Damascus offers approximately fourteen weeks of instruction and is devoted to the overall development of all language skills. Like the summer, the fall semester curriculum consists of a fixed set of courses that each fellow must take; no tutorials or elective courses are offered. Students are expected to spend 5-6 hours every week day working on homework assignments and about 10-12 hours on the weekend. The fall curriculum provides between 16 and 18 contact hours per week distributed among the following courses:

Egyptian/Syrian Colloquial Arabic (ECA/SCA) (6 hours per week)
The aim of this course is to continue to develop the fellows' proficiency in ECA/SCA and to further expand the work begun in the summer program. Emphasis in the fall is placed on enhancing cultural proficiency, expanding vocabulary, improving grammatical accuracy, and developing the learners' ability to mix elements from ECA/SCA and MSA depending on various social contexts. In order to accommodate varying levels of proficiency, fellows are placed in different sections based on their levels.

Reading and Vocabulary Building (6 hours per week)
This course aims to build students' reading skills and strategies and increase their ability to handle extended texts with higher levels of speed, comprehension, and accuracy. It also aims to expand both general and specialized vocabulary in order to develop proficiency in reading a variety of text genres. The course utilizes both fiction and nonfiction reading materials and requires extensive work both inside and outside the classroom. The course involves a substantial amount of writing to reinforce vocabulary control and enhance grammatical accuracy. The course is organized around certain themes chosen by the faculty and fellows (e.g., language and society, the Arabs and the West, identity, globalization, economic development, etc.). These themes also allow integration among all the fall semester courses, providing repeated exposure to the same range of vocabulary in reading, listening, writing, and speaking activities. Class activities include in-class timed readings, vocabulary building activities, extended discussions and presentations on materials read. Fellows are placed in different sections based on their levels of proficiency.

Listening and Speaking (6 hours per week)
Two main objectives underlie the fall semester listening course: 1) to further improve the fellows' ability to comprehend the various spoken registers of Arabic, and 2) to enhance their ability to make extended formal oral presentations in MSA.

The course provides a variety of listening materials from the media in both MSA and Educated Arabic that contain a mixture of ECA/SCA and MSA. In addition, this course utilizes the CASA Fall Lecture Series for further exposure to academic presentations in Arabic. This course also has multiple sections, to which students are assigned according to proficiency level.

The Fall Lecture Series
During the fall semester, CASA offers a lecture series that constitutes an integral part of the academic program in general and the Listening Comprehension course in particular. The lectures are part of the CASA program at both CASA locations in Cairo and Damascus and they deal with a variety of topics and are presented by leading Egyptian and Syrian academics and intellectuals. The lecture series is intended to supplement the themes of the reading course and to provide further listening practice.

The Cultural Program
In addition to courses and the lecture series, CASA students participate in the diverse cultural program offered by CASA in cooperation with the ALI.at AUC and the Language Center at the University of Damascus.

Course objectives and requirements for fall semester courses:

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The Spring Semester

The spring semester represents the culmination of the CASA program. In the spring, fellows in Cairo and Damascus have the chance to tailor the program to their own academic and professional needs and to fully utilize the advanced language skills they have developed during the summer and fall, in working with Arabic materials in their own fields of specialization. The harder fellows have worked in the summer and fall semesters, the more they will be able to take advantage of and enjoy the spring semester.

Each fellow is required to take four courses, approximately 12 contact hours per week. These courses include one required course, "Writing, Stylistics and Grammar," and 3 elective courses (see below). Fellows may opt to take three language courses (such as Advanced ECA/SCA, Spoken MSA, Translation, Writing, etc.), or may wish to focus on courses related to her/his research (in Literature, Religion, Sociology, or Economics, etc.). Many fellows choose to combine both language-focused and non-language courses. The spring semester offers a great deal of flexibility, and allows fellows to set their own curriculum. In consultation with the CASA Executive Director in Cairo and Damascus, fellows choose from the list of courses that have been offered over the past few years or may even design a course of their own and seek a faculty member for the course. (Note: Financial restrictions prevent CASA from offering individual tutorials. Any course offered in the spring must have a minimum enrollment of five fellows.)

The faculty who teach in the spring semester are drawn from the Arabic Language Institute at AUC and the Language Center at the University of Damascus, as well as from Egyptian and Syrian universities and research institutes. The faculty are leading specialists in the academic fields they teach and they conduct the CASA spring courses as they do the advanced courses they offer at Syrian or Egyptian universities.

Writing, Stylistics and Grammar (3 hours per week)
The writing course aims to enhance the fellows' ability to produce extended Arabic discourse that is structurally correct and reflective of the stylistic characteristics of Arabic. Fellows in this course experiment with various writing styles with special attention paid to academic writing. They also work extensively on improving the grammatical accuracy and stylistics of their written work through the use of connectors, synonyms, parallelism, complex sentence structure, and so forth. Fellows are required to produce a paper in their field of specialization by the end of the semester. The Writing course is also offered in multiple sections.

The following are some of the spring courses that have been offered at the CASA Cairo location in the last few years:

Advanced Aural and Written Media, Advanced Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, Advanced Translation, Advanced Writing, Andalusian Literature, Arabic Film Studies, Arabic Grammar, Arabic Literature, Arabic Poetry, Contemporary Arab Political Thought, Coptic Studies, Economic Development in Egypt, History of Cairo, History of Modern Egypt, Islamic Jurisprudence, Islamic Political Philosophy, Kuttaab (Traditional Quranic Memorization and Recitation), Media Studies, Medieval Texts, Popular Culture, Qur'an and Hadith, Scientific Texts (Medieval Science), Spoken MSA, Urban Planning of Cairo, Women's Studies, 1001 Nights.

The spring semester in Egypt also has its own cultural program that includes several trips to various parts of Egypt. Past trips have included the Monastery of St. Catherine, Mt. Moses and Nuweiba, Marsa Matrouh and Siwa Oasis, Oases of the Western Desert.

Course objectives and requirements for spring semester courses:

Writing Course (PDF, 86K)

PDF files require Adobe's Acrobat Reader software, a free download from Adobe's website.

What Does the CASA Full-Year Fellowship Cover?

Each CASA full-year fellow will receive the following:

roundtrip airfare to/from Cairo or Damascus
paid tuition for all courses
a stipend of 2200 Egyptian Pounds/20,000 Syrian Pounds per month to help meet living expenses
program-related tours of Cairo/Damascus and subsidized trips to historical sites in Egypt and Syria

The CASA program will handle all travel reservations and issue the tickets for the fellow. CASA fellows are responsible for arranging and paying for their housing and meals. Each CASA full-year fellow is expected to pay a non-refundable program fee of $1,650 (for students affiliated with CASA Consortium Schools) or $2,200 (for students not affiliated with Consortium Schools). More details regarding program expenses

Liberal Arts Services

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