CARGC Book Talk: Andrew Simon, Dartmouth College

Andrew Simon will present his new book, "Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt."

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About the Book

Media of the Masses investigates the social life of an everyday technology—the cassette tape—to offer a multisensory history of modern Egypt. Over the 1970s and 1980s, cassettes became a ubiquitous presence in Egyptian homes and stores. Audiocassette technology gave an opening to ordinary individuals, from singers to smugglers, to challenge state-controlled Egyptian media. Enabling an unprecedented number of people to participate in the creation of culture and circulation of content, cassette players and tapes soon informed broader cultural, political, and economic developments and defined "modern" Egyptian households.

Drawing on a wide array of audio, visual, and textual sources that exist outside the Egyptian National Archives, Andrew Simon provides a new entry point into understanding everyday life and culture. Cassettes and cassette players, he demonstrates, did not simply join other twentieth century mass media, like records and radio; they were the media of the masses. Comprised of little more than magnetic reels in plastic cases, cassettes empowered cultural consumers to become cultural producers long before the advent of the Internet. Positioned at the productive crossroads of social history, cultural anthropology, and media and sound studies, Media of the Masses ultimately shows how the most ordinary things may yield the most surprising insights.

About the Speaker

Andrew Simon is a historian of media, popular culture, and the modern Middle East. He was a fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and is currently serving as a Senior Lecturer in the Middle Eastern Studies program at Dartmouth College. Simon is the modern history book review editor for the International Journal of Middle East Studies and his interdisciplinary research has received generous support from the Social Science Research Council and the American Research Center in Egypt. His work has been published in the International Journal of Middle East Studies and cited in the Washington Post. Andrew Simon's first book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press 2022), shares the extraordinary story of an ordinary object.

This event is co-sponsored by the Middle East Center.