Professor James P. Austin lived and taught in Cairo, Egypt between 2006-2010. He traveled widely throughout the nation, including: Bahariya Oasis, the Sinai Penninsula, Mt. Sinai, the Red Sea Coptic Monasteries, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Bent Pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Sakkara; and throughout Cairo: Islamic Cairo, Coptic Cairo, Manshiet Nasser, Al Azar Park, and even the Horreya, Cairo’s famous dive bar. Join Professor Austin on this informative, entertaining journey through his memories of the ancient nation home to one of the greatest cities on Earth, told from an expatriate who lived there while the Iraq War raged just a few hundred kilometers away, and just months before the Arab Spring toppled the Egyptian government.
James P. Austin is an assistant professor in the CCSU Department of English. He holds a PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a MFA from the University of California, Irvine. In the period between between these degrees, Professor Austin lived in Cairo, Egypt and taught writing at the American University in Cairo. He has published in some of the finest journals ad presses in the field of Writing Studies. His work focuses on the way individual writers navigate, and sometimes manipulate, the social-cultural rules which are meant to constrain topic selection and attitude expression among communicators. He originates from a small town in southwestern Ohio.