Middle East Studies combines language expertise, cultural understanding, a solid disciplinary background, interdisciplinary study, and study abroad to achieve broad knowledge about the Middle East and its place in a global context. The program emphasizes the need to understand the region from a multidisciplinary perspective. As such it includes courses in anthropology, geography, history, literature and culture, political science, religion, and sociology, and requires that students take courses about the region in both the humanities and social sciences.
Proposals for 2009-10 include:
Documentarian Khadija al-Salami;
Abdul Haqiqi Wassay (currently legal counsel to the Minister of Economics and the Afghani House of Representatives and has played a key role in drafting post-Taliban Afghani legal codes);
Daniel Varisco (Chair and Professor of Anthropology at Hofstra, who has just published a major review of Said's Orientalism and its legacy).