Professor Fahmy will tell the history of modern Egypt by taking as his starting point and unit of analysis the human body, and specifically the tortured body. Through an analysis of penal codes, police practice, and the evolution of forensic medicine, and by tracing popular reaction to physical torture practiced by state officials on citizens’ bodies, he will argue that at the core of the founding of the modern Egyptian state was the ability of that state to lay claims on the bodies of its citizens and to monopolize the practice of organized violence. The presentation ends with the events of the 2011 revolution in Egypt, a revolution that erupted in a clear, albeit frustrated attempt to put an end to state violence.

Professor Fahmy is a Chair of the Department of History at the American University in Cairo (AUC). With a BA in Economics and an MA in Political Science from AUC, and a DPhil in History from the University of Oxford, Fahmy taught for five years at Princeton University, then for eleven years at New York University before joining AUC in 2010. His research interests lie in the social and cultural history of modern Egypt. His books include All the Pasha’s Men: Mehmed Ali, His Army and the Making of Modern Egypt (Cambridge 1997),  Mehmed Ali: From Ottoman Governor to Ruler of Egypt (Oxford 2008), and The Body and Modernity (Cairo, in Arabic, 2004).