Chloe Bordewich - News and Rumor in Egypt on the Eve of the Mass Press

This lecture will be hosted on Sunday, 9 February 2025 at 6:00 pm.

After the founding of al-Ahram in the summer of 1876, Egypt’s Arabic periodical press expanded exponentially and soon came to dominate the Arab world. But how did the news travel before?

This lecture explores what people in Egypt knew about events in distant places and how they gathered information before they could easily purchase a newspaper. By the mid-1870s, the peak of Khedive Isma‘il’s reign (1863-1879), Egyptian territory stretched down the Red Sea coast as far as present-day Somaliland.

Telegraphy, steam, and print all helped extend Cairo’s influence far from the metropole and altered Egyptians’ relationship to the wider world. But none replaced talking. This lecture investigates how the oral transmission of news and rumor both abetted and undercut the new technologies that paved the way for the mass press.

About the speaker

Chloe Bordewich is a postdoctoral fellow in public humanities and new media based in Canada at the Jackman Humanities Institute, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on media and imperialism in 19th- and 20th-century Egypt. Bordewich received a PhD in history and Middle Eastern studies from Harvard University in 2022. She was a fellow at the Center for Study Abroad (CASA) at the American University in Cairo from 2012-13 and a guest researcher at NVIC in 2019.

Attention!

The lecture starts at 6 pm. The number of seats is limited and we work on a first-come, first-served basis. We open our doors at 5:30 and close them at 6:15 or earlier in case the lecture room reaches its full capacity. This talk will not be recorded nor livestreamed.