Ziad Fahmy

Professor

416 White Hall
zfahmy@cornell.edu

Departments and programs

Africana Studies and Research Center
History
Near Eastern Studies

Affiliated Colleges

College of Arts and Sciences

Keywords

soundscapes sound-studies media-studies History of Modern Egypt popular-culture Radio sensory History

Overview

Ziad Fahmy is a Professor of Modern Middle East History at the department of Near Eastern studies. 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.

He is the author of Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020), which won the Urban History Association's 2021 award for Best Book in Non-North American Urban History. Professor Fahmy also wrote 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, 1928-1952. 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.

Courses Taught

Women in the Modern Middle East
Theory and Method in Near Eastern Studies
History of Modern Egypt
History of the Modern Middle East
Contesting Egyptian Identities
Nationalism(s) & Nation-States in the Arab World

Research Focus

Nationalism and state formation in the nineteenth and twentieth century Middle East
Trans-nationalism and the fluidity of identity in the nineteenth century Mediterranean World
Historical sounds and soundscapes
Media Studies and the history of early radio

Publications

Books

Street Sounds: Listening to Everyday Life in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2020)
Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011)

Select Peer Reviewed Journal Articles & Book Chapters:

[Manuscript submitted] “Legal Chameleons and Jurisdictional Borderlands in Nineteenth Century Egypt.” Submitted to a Brill edited volume titled, Transforming Empire: The Ottomans from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, Co-edited by Serpil Atamaz, Alexander Schweig, and Onur Inal. Scheduled for 2024.
“Traffic Noise and Classism in Early Twentieth Century Egypt.” Submitted to an Oxford University Press edited volume tentatively titled, The Acoustics of Empire, Co-edited by Priyasha Mukhopadhyay & Peter McMurray. [Forthcoming in 2023].
"Early Egyptian Radio: From Media-Capitalism to Media-Etatism, 1925-1934.” Middle East Journal of Culture and Communication, special issue on “Media Transitions and Cultural Production in Arab Societies: Trans-historical Perspectives,” co-edited by Barbara Winckler & Teresa Pepe. [2021].
“An Earwitness to History: Street Hawkers and their Calls in Early Twentieth Century ‎Egypt.” Roundtable. ‎International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 48, no.1 (2016)
“Jurisdictional Borderlands: Extraterritoriality and ‘Legal Chameleons’ in Precolonial Alexandria, 1840-1870” in Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no.2 ‎(April 2013): 305-329.
“Coming to our Senses: Historicizing Sound and Noise in the Middle East” in History Compass 11, no.4 (April 2013): 305-315.
“Media Capitalism: Colloquial Mass Culture and Nationalism in Egypt, 1908-1918” in The International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 01 (2010): 83-103.
“Francophone Egyptian Nationalists, Anti-British Discourse, and European Public Opinion 1885-1910: The Case of Mustafa Kamil and Ya‘qub Sannu‘” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East [Duke University Press] 28, no. 1 (2008): 170-183.