Cross-Cultural Blog

Gaby, Kiah, Jaili, and Josie

Prostitution, while illegal, is still very common in the United States. However, in the popular perception of prostitution in the U.S. the woman is the prostitute while the man solicits her services. The reversal of roles mentioned in the Dahab article is fascinating in that heterosexual male prostitution is very uncommon in the U.S. Is male prostitution common or at least not strange in Egypt? Why do you suppose that is?

In the expected prostitution relationship, the female assumes the inferior position of a woman and a prostitute. However, in Dahab, prostitutes would appear to be under the financial control of the tourist. At the same time, males in most societies, including Egypt, hold a higher position of power. Who holds the power in the relationship between an Egyptian male prostitute and a foreign female tourist?

What kind of impression does this make on tourists and Egyptian locals? Although Western tourists are likely used to the idea of seeing women in positions of power, the idea of a woman wielding significant influence on a man is not a common one in other countries. As is the case in Egypt, there is a strong attempt to prevent any change in the balance of power between the sexes, but the emphasis is on curbing the activities of the male Egyptian, not the female tourist. Clearly, while Egyptians want to maintain the image of the dominant male, they are still cautious about explicitly restricting tourist activities.

In America, police enforcement of laws against prostitution seems to target the prostitutes themselves and rarely ever punishes the “Johns” that create the market for prostitution.

Do you see that there is a big gender gap in the enforcement of male prostitution versus female prostitution or the way couples who consist of a Egyptian male and a foreign women are arraigned more? If this is the case, is this prevalent and obvious or is it hidden and does it go unnoticed? Is there a difference between the city and rural areas or between Dahab and other cities?

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

By: Nikolas, Kevin, Aurora, Kiah, Mercedes and Keshav

Source: http://www.traveladventures.org/continents/africa/pyramids3.shtml

Egypt, especially Cairo, provides a healthy mix of the ancient and modern. With its bustling city life, state of the art opera house, and luxurious western hotels and shopping, Cairo seems no different from any western metropolis. However, the city also houses 14th century Khan el-Khalili bazaar, monuments, and a famous antiquity museum. Most importantly, a stones throw away lie the great pyramids.

Continue reading "Egypt in Our Eyes" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

By: Crowley, Colin, Chrissy, Katherine, Kasey

When first asked, “what are your initial stereotypical perspectives of Egypt?” our class responded with a slur of clichéd images, ones that are formed through the media, museums, schooling, and places like Las Vegas. Immediately images of pyramids, camels, a dry and arid climate, the Nile River, Cleopatra, pharaohs and King Tut, mummies, and the Ten Plagues of Egypt came to mind – all of these images contrived due to present-day American culture.

Continue reading "Egypt in America" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 09:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Mohamed Allam
Fady Barsoom
Abdullah Atiya
Sarah El Massery

Living in a touristic country like Egypt, is considered a double edged sword. Tourism benefits our country economically since it is one of the main sources of our income; however, tourists receive special treatment in Egypt, especially from security and police. When I was in Hurghada (which is a very popular city on the Red Sea), I saw a police officer asking some Egyptians for their IDs, a routine occurrence. What was unusual was that for no specific reason the police officer just decided to take the person who showed his Egyptian ID into the police station. As soon as the guy heard that he was going to the police station he took out his German passport and handed it to the officer. Suddenly, the police officer changed his tone and started joking just to let go of the issue. The half-Egyptian-half-German man just looked to the officer with disgust and said “I showed you my Egyptian ID and you wanted to hurt me, but now you treat me so kindly just because I showed you this (German Passport)?”

We have to admit that the problem is not in the tourists, but in the Egyptian government which values tourists more than Egyptians because of the money they bring into the country. This indicates some drawbacks in the Egyptian system. The law is not enforced on tourists especially Arabs from the Gulf who do as they please and are left unjudged. We should be very welcoming to our visitors and tourists, tolerant with them and hospitable as we have always been, but at the end of the day we would want to see both tourists and Egyptians treated with the same level of respect.

Posted by AUC Rhetoric of Education Class at 05:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Sherif Yassin
Rana Abd El Aal
Dalia Abd El Aziz
Nora Hamdy

Egypt has always been a country where tourists from all over the world visit. Tourism has always been popular in Egypt because of its great history, geographical diversity and extraordinary nice weather. The tourism industry provides Egypt and its citizens with economic and social benefits. According to the Egyptian Tourism Minister
Zuheir Garana Tourism attracts 11 million tourists annually and will reach approximately $12 billion by 2011 that kind of revenue makes tourism vital for Egypt. Also, we Egyptians get to see the tourist's amazement at all of our monuments. This make us appreciate our country even more. We begin to think to ourselves "How come we haven’t seen many of our monuments up till this moment while all of the foreigners come from all over the world to see these things?'

Beyond any doubt, tourism improves the quality of life for Egyptian citizens and the whole world.

Posted by AUC Rhetoric of Education Class at 05:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Hi Stanford Bloggers,
we are Hannah, Fatma, Farid, and Mark, a group of students from the RHET 201 class in the American University in Cairo. We are all part of a research writing class and we are very excited to be blogging with you.

Tourism affects various aspects of an Egyptian’s life and culture; starting with a multilingual nature to a feeling of inferiority and dependence. Those effects are not all necessarily beneficial nor are they all harmful. Yet, their significance in shaping modern Egyptian culture is undeniable.
Tourism engraved various traits into our culture. Hospitality comes naturally to Egyptians; it is the trait most obvious to spot among Egyptians. Additionally, as residents of a country that hosts millions of global tourists every year it has become typical of Egyptians from various sectors of society to speak more than one language in order to communicate with the visitors. Another positive side-effect of tourism is the constant exposure to people from different cultures. This has taught us the importance of respect, tolerance and understanding.
Along with positive effects of tourism on Egyptians comes a sense of inferiority and need. Tourism constitutes over 40% of the nation’s economy, and has created a sense of inferiority to foreigners in the hearts of many Egyptians. The pressure to maintain and develop tourism potential coupled with a long history of colonization makes many Egyptians work hard to please tourists over themselves. Throughout Egyptian society the “West” is perceived of as superior and more commonly there is a notion of anything that is foreign as superior.
In short, Egypt’s dependence on tourism has definitely affected the various aspects of the Egyptian cultural identity. Although some of the effects are beneficial to Egyptian culture like the learning of multiple languages, there are also the feelings of inferiority to tourists.

Posted by AUC Rhetoric of Education Class at 04:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Ahmed Aboul Enein
Deena Abdelmonem
Noha El Farouk
Nemat Assaad

Hi, we're Ahmed, Noha, Nemat and Deena. We are Egyptian students at the American University and Cairo and we have taken an interest in the tourist activity that goes on in Egypt. We have looked into this matter by reading many articles and from our own observation that occurs in our daily lives.

Egyptians tend to have mixed feelings about the institutions running their country, but most can acknowledge that tourism is a major factor that helps shape the appeal Egypt has to the rest of the world. Tourists have become a prominent staple in Egypt’s many scopes, and Egyptians do the best they can to keep the tourism industry running.
People from all over the world come to visit Egypt for its timeless treasures and unique, lively culture. Being exposed to tourists your whole life makes you accustomed to it after a while though. However as youngsters, we couldn’t help but feel amazed by the people who marveled over the most basic aspects of our daily lives. Yes donkey carts may seem out of place in other countries but we as Egyptians cannot imagine walking down the street without seeing them. Other than astonishment, there was a general feeling of pride. All of these people paid a lot of money and flocked from different, far places all over the world in order to come and see our land and its wonderful sights.

We find it amusing that they come to our country and fascinate over how we go about our daily lives as Egyptians. However, as we grow older, this confusion mixed with pride slowly changes into acceptance. We also began to understand the importance of Egypt’s tourism industry and how crucial it is to our country’s economy and international acclaim. After seeing those tourists for almost every day of our lives we accept the fact that they too are part of our daily lives. We even stop noticing them as much, they are as part of Egypt as the pyramids themselves.

Posted by AUC Rhetoric of Education Class at 04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

Nada Ayman Abdelmohsen
Hesham Khaled Atwa
Ahmed Youssef Bedda
Ramy Hatem Fakhr
Ahmed Mohamed El-Mikawi

The Egyptian government has been striving to preserve the country’s reputation of being a top tourist destination and has neglected to show tourists the unsterilized culture and society of the nation. We can either present tourists with a lame attempt at a pseudo-utopian society in which the people are completely satisfied, or we can candidly reveal the reality that is now Cairo, misery and all.

Although I would not want to depict my home country as an economically developing third world nation, the government’s deceptive illustration of our nation to the tourist industry is unethical. I want to show tourists the real Egypt. In order for them to share in the bittersweet sentiment that makes me love this country. They will need to experience the lightheartedness that populates the hearts of the average person no matter how dire their conditions are.This sense of humor has got to be our most amiable attribute as Egyptian people. Instead of having tourists see only one side of our culture, I would have them embrace our sociable personalities and see us who for truly are.

We should be flaunting our collective sociable personality and have foreigners know us for who we really are as a people.

Posted by AUC Rhetoric of Education Class at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

This is Yara and I have lived abroad for thirteen years, mostly in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. There I met people from all over the world at a very young age and so meeting people with different backgrounds and cultures became normal. Coming back to Egypt, seeing a tourist only reminds me of the years I spent abroad and the multi-ethnic friendships I had. - Yara

My name is Yasmine and I have also lived abroad for 13 years. The two countries where I lived (Botswana and Gambia) are very well known tourist destinations, so I have been accustomed to seeing tourists since the earliest stages of my childhood. I find that tourists just blend into my daily life. In Gambia, where I had been living most recently, we associated the “tourist season” with much celebration and leisure, given the amount of events that took place in the country during that time. This effect does not come into play in Egypt however, I feel very indifferent about tourism here because there are no “special” event that takes place when tourists come to Egypt.- Yasmine

Coming back to Egypt, I realized how much I had no idea about anything regarding my own culture. It was the tourists who taught me about Egypt’s history and its value. I think it is startling how tourists come to experience the “Egyptian” way of living. Frankly, I’m used to living around ‘tourists’ more than people of my own country. Therefore, I tend not to notice when tourists are around. Salma

As an Egyptian living here in Cairo all my life, constantly seeing tourists made me realize the significant difference between us. Their fascination with Egypt’s history and culture makes me appreciate and value my Egyptian identity and where I come from. Growing up, I did not think about it as a child; it was only recently that I have really considered it.- Farah

My life is different a little. I lived for like four years in Istanbul/Turkey then traveled to Rome/Italy staying there for another four years. As a result, agreeing with Yasmine, I have been habituated with tourists to the extent that I lived with them. Nevertheless, returning back to my home town finding out that it is visited by a huge number of tourists from all over the world did not in fact surprise a person who lived with and dealt with them- Seif

Posted by AUC Rhetoric of Education Class at 04:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

by Dan Johnston, Kallie Friedman, Andrea Fuentes, Sarah Cheng, Tatiana Iskandar, and Stephanie Byrne

In the United States, the representations of Egypt in our modern society are based on symbols of ancient Egyptian history.

From film and song to architecture, depictions of mummies, pyramids and sphinxes are often present.
For example, most Americans have seen the widely popular film “The Mummy.” In this film, Egypt is portrayed as vast desert where mummies and pyramids are main components of the plot.

We also see representations of ancient Egypt in popular architecture. For example, the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, is constructed to resemble a classic pyramid.

Continue reading "America's Egypt" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 06:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBacks (0)

By Katherine Busch, Nikiya Crisostomo, Paul Iona, and Julia Lee

Hippies, drugs, and prostitutes—the image of Dahab in Egypt and beyond. What can this town possibly teach the rest of the world about tourism? But in this oft-marginalized tourist backwater, a model for positive interaction between locals and visitors fosters economic stability and fluid cultural exchange.

Continue reading "The Upside of Dahab" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 12:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBacks (0)

by Tristan Sansbury, Michael Repper, Ben Arnstein, Christine Karamagi, and Lee Jackson

When Egypt is mentioned, Americans typically think of the pyramids, sphinxes, pharaohs, large deserts, etc. However, what Americans should know about is the sporty, recreational tourist environment also prevalent in Egypt. Beautiful Mediterranean and Red Sea beaches, adventuresome safaris, and bustling cities are all part of the tourist experience in Egypt.

Continue reading "Egypt: After Further Exploration" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

By Andrea Fuentes, Stephanie Byrne, Christina Karamagi, Mike Repper, Kallie Friedman

Stanford has a fantastic system of dining halls, and there are many non-cafeteria places on campus to grab a quick bite. Even so, every student knows eating in dining halls can become monotonous. For a change of pace, students escape to nearby Palo Alto for an enjoyable meal. Palo Alto is extremely accessible, only 10 minutes by bike from most residences, but it provides a quick escape from the stressful college scene. It’s not a “typical” college town.

Continue reading "Eat!" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 08:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

By Katherine Busch, Dan Johnston, Ben Arnstein, Tristan Sansbury, Lee Jackson


In 1937, Frank Lloyd Wright began work on what would become a masterpiece of architecture known worldwide—the Hanna House. It was his first work in the Bay Area, and has since become a primary tourist attraction of the Stanford Area. Architects from Belgium, the Netherlands, and Japan travel thousands of miles to visit this dramatic innovation in Wright’s style. In this piece, Wright utilizes a new technique inspired by formations of the natural world: its repeating hexagonal shapes mimic the honeycomb. The hexagon also allowed the architect to open up the space more, making larger rooms with larger windows...

Continue reading "The Hanna House: An Overlooked Gem (Totally Rad)" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

By Paul, Nikiya, Tatiana, Sarah, and Julia

Stanford University attracts many tourists each year, some visiting scholars and others potential students. Of the many attractions, Stanford’s unique architecture captures the interest of visitors the moment they step off the tour bus. Our architecture represents many themes, each building adhering to the styles of the time as well as the economic situation of the times. What results is a campus that represents a mixing pot of styles, while still keeping a theme of tan walls and red roofs that define Stanford architecture.

Continue reading "Stanford Architectural Timeline" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 12:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Stanford students love to take part in weird traditions. The most aerobic and freeing of them all? Sprinting all over campus in the middle of the night, splashing in every one of Stanford's 12 campus fountains along the way. Students run, in mob form, from fountain to fountain. (There are always a few unlucky people that plan on just watching but get thrown in the freezing water anyway.) By the end, however, everyone is running on adrenaline, completely out of breath, ready to take a hot shower, and glad that they survived the madness with only a slight case of hypothermia.

Continue reading "An Insider's Guide for Outsiders: Stanford's Wacky Traditions" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

By Nikolas, Colin, Aurora, Kiah, Keshav, Hailialoha

The Memorial Church (MemChu) is one of Stanford’s most important monuments. Located in the Main Quad, in the center of the campus, MemChu is an ecumenical church that serves students from all different faiths. The church was built by the university’s co-founder Jane Stanford in honor of her husband Leland. Its architectural features are so breath-taking that everyday while we cross the Main Quad to go to classes we see groups of tourists taking pictures in front of the church.

Continue reading "Stanford's outside architecture" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Stanford sports are a central part of Stanford life. We boast the best overall sports program in the nation, something that every student takes pride in. We’ve won the award for best overall collegiate athletic performance, the Sears Director’s Cup, the last fourteen years in a row, and we sent over 30 athletes to the Beijing Olympic games. This pride is manifested through the sea of Cardinal Red that one can unmistakably see during any basketball or football game. Alumni from across the country return to support their Stanford team and continue to be an integral part of the Stanford fan base.

Continue reading "Sports Tourism at Stanford" »

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

This quarter, my students and I are reading, thinking, and writing about the rhetoric of tourism. On Stanford’s campus, we see tourists everyday as they pour off tour buses at the Oval, walk around campus with a backwards-walking tour guide, and wander through the Rodin sculptures, cameras clicking. When we take time away from studying and working to explore a part of campus we’re not familiar with, we become—for however brief period of time—tourists ourselves. In this blog posting, we consider what constitutes a tourist attraction, why tourists are attracted to Stanford, and how the beautiful campus, with its blend of old and new, ostentatious and hidden, encourages us to move effortlessly between our identities as tourists and students.

--Julia Bleakney, Instructor, Rhetoric of Tourism

Posted by Julia Bleakney, Stanford University at 08:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)