Ziad Fahmy, professor of Near Eastern studies, is conducting research in Egypt, supported by a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award. The grant began in January; Fahmy will work in Egypt through the end of the fall 2025 semester.
With the award, Fahmy is working on his book “Broadcasting Identity: Radio and the Making of Modern Egypt, 1928-1952,” the first critical history of early Egyptian radio. The book examines the impact of radio broadcasting on Egyptian society from its early beginnings in the 1920s, when over a dozen commercial stations were in operation, until the golden age of Egyptian radio in the 1950s.
“In Egypt I will be accessing many relevant radio related files at the Egyptian National Archives in Cairo,” Fahmy said. “I will also use the Egyptian National Library and the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, where I will consult a variety of radio and entertainment related periodicals. These resources will complement the research I have already done at the British National Archives.”
“Broadcasting Identity” reflects on the various modalities of public and private radio listening and considers the impact of listening simultaneity on the Egyptian public, Fahmy wrote of the project. It also considers the full range of broadcast sounds and vocalizations.
Wordless vocalizations – from sighs, grunts to weeping and laughter – convey the full range of human emotions and forge an emotive bond with the listener, Fahmy said. Though often neglected in the literature, the broadcasting of the human voice with its various accents, tones, pitches, and pronunciations can be a powerfully embodied register of identity as voices are often loaded with multi-layered aural signaling of sexuality, race, ethnicity, class and national identity.
Fahmy 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. Fahmy also wrote "Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the Modern Nation through Popular Culture" (Stanford University Press, 2011).
