Date: Thursday, November 17, 2011, 7:00pm

Chapter: Co-sponsored by ARCE Northwest and UW NELC Dept.

Presenter: Shaun Lopez, University of Washington, Seattle

Location: Smith Hall 205 - UW Seattle Campus

Admission is free and open to the public.

Description: This talk examines the legitimizing narratives that emerged around the bids of Egypt, South Africa, and Morocco to host the 2010 FIFA Soccer World Cup. FIFA's decision to place the cup finals on African soil for the first time forced Egypt and the other bidding nations to navigate between narratives of modernity on the one hand, and the geographic, cultural, historical, and racial imaginary of "Africa" on the other. For Egyptians, this meant reconciling and re-packaging its own real and imagined historical relationship with Sub-Saharan Africa.

About the Speaker: Shaun Lopez is an assistant professor of history at the University of Washington, Seattle. He specializes in the cultural and social history of modern Egypt, and his publications have appeared in a number of journals, including Middle East Critique, History Compass, Comparative Studies of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, and the International Journal of Middle East Studies. He is currently preparing his book manuscript, entitled "Making Egypt Moral: Gender, Crime, and the Mass Media, 1920-1955