Social Science Research Council

As part of its ongoing interest in understanding the production of knowledge about the Middle East and North Africa region, the MENA Program is conducting a study of Middle East Studies (MES) centers on U.S. campuses, with a special focus on the role of these centers in promoting interdisciplinarity and internationalization in the field. One of the promises of area studies programs is the potential to combine the comparative strengths of the social sciences with in-depth cultural and linguistic competence. The study especially focuses on the state of the fields of political science, sociology, and economics in Middle East studies as well as the robustness of current academic linkages between the region and U.S. campuses. The project is funded through a grant from the Department of Education's International Research and Studies Program. A steering committee composed of Karen Pfeifer (Smith College), Resat Kasaba (the University of Seattle, Washington) and Lisa Wedeen (the University of Chicago) is overseeing the project together with Seteney Shami, SSRC program director for the Middle East & North Africa and Eurasia programs. A research team has been assembed to develop the appropriate methodology and research tools to conduct a thorough and informative study. Members of the research team are Cynthia Miller-Idriss, senior project consultant and assistant professor of international education and educational sociology at NYU and Elizabeth Anderson, project researcher, who have been conducting the site-visits and data gathering. In addition, Kirk Belnap and Jeremy Browne of the National Middle East Language Resource Center at Brigham Young University are working with project staff to analyze the data housed in the Department of Education's EELIAS database. The fieldwork component of the project includes site visits to 6 leading MES centers across the U.S. The analysis and reports from this study are scheduled to appear by Spring 2007. For more information about the study, please contact program staff at mena@ssrc.org or at 212-377-2700 ext. 613.