Booked! Ep. 1 - 'Cacophonous Cairo' with Ziad Fahmy

This is the inaugural episode of Booked! with host Adel Iskandar which features Cornell University's Dr. Ziad Fahmy who discusses his 2020 book “Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt” from Stanford University Press. In this lively conversation, host Fahmy answers questions about his early interest in sounds from his childhood in the bustle of Alexandria, the move to a comparatively quiet New Jersey, and his forays into theorizing urban sounds. The discussion covers the 1936 Cairo Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition which he explains is a turning point in contemporary history as it illustrates the relationship between sound (in fact multisensory experience), history, modernity, and nationalism for a nation in transition. The discussion tackles the role that electricity plays as a transformative innovation. What happens when all of a sudden, Cairo lights up at night? What repercussions does that have on people's experience of the city?

A unique contribution of this book is its methodological scope which reconstructs sounds from textual descriptions of these sonic acts. Examples discussed in this episode include the iconic early 20th century cartoon character of Mishmish Effendi who features in public service films castigating the public for being too noisy and violating bourgeois sensibilities. Fahmy engages with wider debates around taste and aesthetics, the notion of vulgarity, and the role of power in definition what is and isn't heard. Whether it is the loudspeaker, the sermon, the moulid, the call to prayer, or the church bells, Fahmy argues convincingly for recognizing these and other mundane sounds as defining. He advocates for a move away from oculocentrism--the excessive focus and prioritization of the visual over other sensory experiences. From the operette of El-Layla El Kibeera to revolutionary slogans, we learn from Fahmy how sounds can be defining both politically and culturally.

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Ziad Fahmy—Bio

Ziad Fahmy is a Professor of Modern Middle East History at the department of Near Eastern studies at Cornell University. Professor Fahmy received his History Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Arizona, where his dissertation “Popularizing Egyptian Nationalism” was awarded the Malcolm H. Kerr Dissertation Award (2008) from the Middle East Studies Association. Professor Fahmy is the author of Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020-Forthcoming); and Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford University Press, 2011). He is currently writing his third book, tentatively titled, Broadcasting Identity: Radio and the Making of Modern Egypt, 1925-1952. His articles have appeared in Comparative Studies in Society and History, the International Journal of Middle East Studies, History Compass, and in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. His research has been ‎supported by the Fulbright-Hays Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Research Center in Egypt.

Show Synopsis/Intro

Booked! is a specialty program on Status الوضع that features in-depth interviews with the authors of books covering some aspect of life, history, politics, culture, economics, architecture, media and other perspectives on the Middle East and North Africa. If you’re a book junkie but there are simply too many manuscripts for you to wade through, this "spoiler-filled" program takes you through a theoretical, methodological, and stylistic journey alongside the author to the most intriguing and memorable hotspots in each volume.