Welcome to the Middle East Institute at Columbia University

Announcements:

Applications are now open for our two MA programs in Islamic Studies and for student fellowships:

Fall 2021 MA admissions: Thursday, February 11th, 2021
FLAS Fellowships : February 11th, 2021
De Bary Fellowship (undergrad only): March 30th, 2021

The Middle East Institute at Columbia University, founded in 1954, promotes the interdisciplinary study of the Middle East and North Africa together with associated regions of Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and related global communities.

News

News Fall 2020

Dec 18, 2020

Happy World Arabic Language Day!

Dec 18, 2020

Today is UNESCO’s World Arabic Language Day. The theme of World Arabic Language Day celebration in 2020: Arabic Language Academies: Necessity or Luxury? Arabic Language Day is a great day to invest in your language learning process! MEI offers the a number of opportunities to support your language learning journey.

Dec 18, 2020

Dec 17, 2020

CALL FOR PAPERS: MESA’s 55th Annual Meeting

Dec 17, 2020

The Middle East Studies Association of North America invites and encourages submissions for its 55th Annual Meeting to be held in the fall of 2021. Submissions by students are more than welcome. MESA’s 55th Annual Meeting
October 28-31, 2021. Deadline for Submissions: February 18, 2021

Dec 17, 2020

Dec 8, 2020

MEI Co-hosting workshops on "Countering Islamophobia Through Education"

Dec 8, 2020

Graduate students from Teachers College, Columbia University will present and discuss themes from their course on Islam, Education, and Radicalization. Presentations will focus on emerging research that explores the role of education in countering Islamophobia and serving as a potent mechanism for de-radicalization. Students will discuss how education can serve as a faciltator for social cohesion, capable of addressing the unique challenges that marginalization, exclusion, discrimination, racism, and radicalization pose for at-risk youth.

Dec 8, 2020

Faculty Publications

Divine Words, Female Voices

God and Man in Tehran

Democratic Transitions in the Muslim World

The End of Middle East History

Sharia Scripts: A Historical Anthropology

A Book of Conquest

The Ink of the Scholars

The Arab City

Islam in Liberalism

The Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters

Reversing the Colonial Gaze Persian Travelers Abroad

Never Wholly Other

Shi'i Islam

Rebel Music

The Origins of the Shi'a

The Impossible State

The Genealogicial Science

Secularism, Identity, and Enchantment

Reading Darwin in Arabic

Brokers of Deceit

Developing Writing Skills in Arabic

Tolerance Democracy and Sufis in Senegal

Do Muslim Women Need Saving

Shi'ism a Religion of Protest

Constructing the Image of Muhammad in Europe

Islamic Science

Islam and Open Society

Islam on the Street

Sharia: Theory, Practice, Transformations

Modernism and Iraq

Desiring Arabs

Struggling with History

The Meaning of Timbuktu

Surrounded

Stolen Honor

Signal and Noise

Nakba

The Iron Cage

Semites

Philosophising in Mombasa

Islamo-Christian Civilization

Dreams of a nation

The Disenchantment of the Orient

Good Muslim, Bad Muslim

Dramas of Nationhood

Theology of Discontent

Gender, Language, and Culture in French Orientalism

Pakistan's Economic & Social Development

The Oliphant

Facts on the Ground

Rule of Experts

Birthing the Nation

Our Place in al-Andalus

Authority, Continuity and Change in Islamic Law

Islamic Legal Theories

Palestinian Identity

Arguing Sainthood

Islamic Legal Interpretation

The Calligraphic State

Islam: The view from the edge

A History of Arabic Astronomy

Colonising Egypt

Writing Women's Worlds

Authority in Islam

Veiled Sentiments

Orientalism

Syrian Intervention in Lebanon: The 1975-76 Civil War

Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-First Century

The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980

Transitions to Democracy

The Origins of Arab Nationalism

Black Routes to Islam (Critical Black Studies)

Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy

Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change

The Price of a Vote in the Middle East

The Middle East: The Politics of the Sacred and Secular

The Hundred Years' War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017

Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East

Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East

The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose

The Prophetic Mode in Modern Hebrew Poetry

The Animal in the Synagogue: Franz Kafka's Jewishness

From Continuity to Contiguity

Colonial Effects The Making of National Identity in Jordan

The Persistence of the Palestinian Question

Saviors and Survivors

Citizen and Subject

When Victims Become Killers

The Persian Gulf in History

Security in the Persian Gulf: Origins, Obstacles, and the Search for Consensus

Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War

Restating Orientalism

New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal

Local Contexts of Islamism in Popular Media

Remaking Women: Feminism and Modernity in the Middle East

The Mediterranean Incarnate

Rituals of War: the body and violence in Mesopotamia

The Graven Image: Representation in Babylonia and Assyria,

Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia

Facing the Wall: The Palestinian-Israeli Barriers

Islam Christianized - Islamic portable objects in the medieval church treasuries of the Latin West

A Month in Siena

The Return

Anatomy of a Disappearance

In the Country of Men

Life in a Country Album

The Republic

Poet in Andalucía

Love and Strange Horses

The Lives of Rain

The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology

All the Names of the Lord

Unsettled belonging: Educating Palestinian American youth after 9/11

The History of Iran

Culture and Customs of Iran

Open to Reason: Muslim Philosophers in Conversation with the Western Tradition

For the War Yet to Come: Planning Beirut’s Frontiers

Narrating Beirut from its Borderlines

Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle

Temporary Cities: Resisting Transience in Arabia

Cotton, Climate, and Camels in Early Islamic Iran: A Moment in History

About Antiquities Politics of Archaeology in the Ottoman Empire

Empire, architecture, and the City

Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America

Scramble for the past. A story of archaeology in the Ottoman Empire, 1753-1914

Camera Ottomana: Photography and Ottoman Modernity, 1840-1914

Walls of Algiers: Narratives of the City through Text and Image

The Global Offensive: The United States, the Palestine Liberation Organization, and the Making of the Post-Cold War Order

World in the Making: A Global History

Philosophy before the Greeks

Crossroads and Cultures. A History of the World’s People

The Venetian Qur'an A Renaissance Companion to Islam

Books Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden

The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century

Wrestling with Zion

Parables of Coercion: Conversion and Knowledge at the End of Islamic Spain

Arabic Literature for the Classroom: Teaching Methods, Theories, Themes and Texts

The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights

The Jew, the Arab A History of the Enemy

Blood A Critique of Christianity

Contemporary Art, World Cinema, and Visual Culture

Persophilia- Persian Culture on the Global Scene

Being a Muslim in the World

Corpus Anarchicum: Political Protest, Suicidal Violence, and the Making of the Posthuman Body

Post-Orientalism: Knowledge and Power in Time of Terror