My Journey with the Middle East: Yemen, Egypt, and the Making of Media of the Masses

In this talk, Andrew Simon, a Duke University alum (class of 2010), will reflect on his journey with the Middle East over the course of the past two decades. Moving from his introduction to Arabic in a Connecticut high school in the aftermath of 9/11 to his time volunteering at a Yemeni children's rights organization in Sana'a to his studies in downtown Cairo during the Arab Spring, he will consider the impact of these experiences and the insights they might offer. In conversation with these key moments, Andrew will then share how his first book, Media of the Masses, a history of cassette culture in Egypt, came to be, and what shapes his future engagements with the Middle East and the region's rich history will take.

Andrew Simon (Dartmouth College) is a historian of media, popular culture, and the Middle East. He was a fellow at the Center for Arabic Study Abroad in downtown Cairo during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and is the modern history book review editor for the International Journal of Middle East Studies. Andrew is the author of Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (2022), which Dar El Shorouk recently made available in Arabic (2025). Currently, he is writing a biography of Shaykh Imam, a blind performer and political dissident, and is making his private collection of cassettes public in a digital archive.