Media of the Masses w/ Andrew Simon [Outline]
Andrew Simon talked about his latest book "Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt." 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.
Andrew Simon is a historian of media, popular culture, and the modern Middle East. He holds a B.A. in Arabic, Middle East, and Islamic Studies from Duke University and was a fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in Cairo during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. He received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and is currently serving as a lecturer at Dartmouth. Andrew's interdisciplinary research has received generous support from the Social Science Research Council and the American Research Center in Egypt, and his work has been published in the International Journal of Middle East Studiesand cited in the Washington Post. Andrew's first book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (2022), is forthcoming with Stanford University Press and shares the extraordinary story of an ordinary object.
About Outline
Outline is a process-focused conversation that looks at guests’ individual projects rather than their full bodies of work. The conversation sketches the journey of the project; the spark of curiosity that led to the project, the process of implementing the idea, the struggles that emerged throughout the implementation, and the aftermath of the project that includes new questions and new ideas. The name “Outline” stems from the idea of creating a retroactive project outline which is part of a broader emphasis on the process of curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking from a nuts and bolts perspective. Outline is not discipline-specific; the series will be held with artists, academics, writers, filmmakers, among others.
