Skip to main content
Hello Visitor!     Log In
Share |

Fadwa El Guindi

El Guindi, Fadwa

El Guindi, Fadwa

Retiree Anthropologist, University of California, USA; Trustee, World Academy of Art and Science

Job Title

Retiree Anthropologist, University of California, USA; Trustee, World Academy of Art and Science

After graduating from AUC with a Bachelor of Arts in political science (cum laude), Fadwa El Guindi ’60 embarked on a long and distinguished career in the field of anthropology. An acclaimed author, documentary filmmaker, anthropologist and scholar with a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, El Guindi has produced international, award-winning visual ethnographies on Arab and Muslim culture, including El Sebou’: Egyptian Birth Ritual, El Moulid: Egyptian Religious Festival and Ghurbal. These films were produced by the U.S.-based El Nil Research, a nonprofit ethnographic laboratory and visual research center founded by El Guindi. As an anthropologist, her research involves fieldwork with Arab, Nubian and Zapotec cultures and Arab-Americans.

A prolific author, El Guindi has more than 80 publications in English, Italian, French, Russian, Arabic, German and Spanish, and serves on the editorial boards of prominent scholarly journals. Her book, Veil: Modesty, Privacy and Resistance, has become an anthropological classic and has been translated into several languages. El Guindi is also the author of The Myth of Ritual: A Native’s Ethnography of Zapotec Life Crisis Rituals, where she adopts the innovative methodology of native ethnography. Other groundbreaking anthropological books she has authored include Visual Anthropology: Essential Method and Theory and By Noon Prayer: The Rhythm of Islam.

Past president of the Society for Visual Anthropology, El Guindi previously served as distinguished professor of anthropology and head of the Department of Social Sciences at Qatar University. She was also a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and taught anthropology at the University of Southern California; University of California, Santa Barbara; and Georgetown University. Her expertise on the Middle East brought her to the Clinton White House, and she frequently gave lectures to diplomats assigned to the Middle East at the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. El Guindi currently lectures internationally and has recently been elected as a fellow of the World Academy of Art & Science.

ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR

Globalization Weaponized, Dominance Fragmented, World Stability Ruptured   ( War in Ukraine ), ( Knowledge, Science & Values ), ( Peace and Security )
Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The current Russia-Ukraine military conflict reveals how the laws established by the United Nations to guide “war behavior” need to be realistically reconsidered in light of the changes since WWII that now characterize military conflicts. Today dominant nations circumvent rules of engagement by resorting to new tactics. It also unmasks a prevalent “global dominance by the West” favoring marketplaces for military weapons disguised in humanitarian rhetoric which...
Reflections on Education, Employment & Sustainability   ( Education ), ( Employment ), ( New Economics ), ( Sustainable Development )
Get Full Text in PDF A dichotomy emerged about a little over a decade and a half ago polarizing the view of academic disciplines into two polarities: inter (cross, trans) disciplinarity, to aim for, versus autonomous fields of research & teaching, which have come to be labelled “silos”, a term which I consider derogatory and manipulative, deployed to bias valuation and attempts at reform. The notion of “Silos” was turned into a negative characterization deployed to undermine disciplinary...
Reflections on Future Education: Ideas for a Model*   ( Education ), ( Knowledge, Science & Values )
Get Full Text in PDF Abstract A rapid change in technology is creating pressure on education to meet employment needs. Two overarching points are discussed in this article: first, rather than fearing the robotization of humans we should humanize technology to serve humanity and second, any educational reform must be contextualized: in particular social and cultural traditions, values and worldviews, considering the population size, demographics and special developmental challenges, instead of...
Toward a New Paradigm of World Governance
 Get Full Text in PDF Abstract The article presents a critical analysis of the existing order of globalism, which imposes Western values and constructs on the human universe. This in turn leads to adverse results. It produces tensions, wars, conflicts and racial and cultural divides. Alternatively, this analysis puts together ideas from the Ancient Egyptian vision of world order and universal stability with contemporary experimental modes of governance, as represented by Egypt’s post-...