Sherene Seikaly’s current work explores the construction and regulation of the poor in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Egypt in terms of governance and of popular politics. Through a political economy of the history of food, this project rethinks our understanding of the “masses” and the specter of the “bread riot.” This talk is generously co-sponsored by the Center for Emerging Worlds.

Seikaly is Assistant Professor of History at UC Santa Barbara.