Our mission

The Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) at Brown University promotes research, teaching and public engagement about the Middle East in a historically and culturally grounded manner. Its coverage is temporally and geographically expansive, extending from antiquity to the present, and it approaches the Middle East as a region with shifting boundaries as well as a conceptual entity within global discourses. As the hub for Middle East studies at Brown, CMES supports research and programming by world-renowned faculty, houses an undergraduate concentration with an interdisciplinary curriculum, and acts as an intellectual and social home for graduate students across various departments. CMES collaborates with other units on campus to further Brown’s work as a global university especially dedicated to seeking a just and prosperous future for all. 

Our faculty

Like other centers at Brown, faculty are affiliated with CMES while being housed in their own academic departments. Any Brown faculty member with expertise in the Middle East is welcome to affiliate with CMES. This affiliation provides access to research and teaching support, the opportunity to organize scholarly events and to get involved in the center’s leadership via its Steering Committee, and membership in a large and vibrant intellectual community. 

Currently, the list of affiliated faculty at CMES includes over forty scholars based in over a dozen departments, including Anthropology, Archaeology, Comparative Literature, Egyptology & Assyriology, French Studies, History, International & Public Affairs, Judaic Studies, Modern Culture and Media, Political Science, Religious Studies and Sociology. 

Our research initiatives and projects

CMES supports research and programming on the Middle East through its research initiatives, research projects, and research funding opportunities. Research initiatives are multi-year projects on broad areas such as Arts and Social Change, Gender Studies, Islam & the Humanities, and Palestinian Studies. Activities typically involve a mix of event programming (conferences, workshops, lectures) as well as peer-reviewed publications. Research projects are shorter, more focused efforts that take up a specific topic and usually span a single year. In 2025-26, CMES will host a research project titled “American-Islamic Exchanges in the Long 19^th Century” which will be co-sponsored by the Islam & the Humanities research initiative and the John Hay Library. Finally, CMES provides research funding for both graduate and undergraduate students interested in the Middle East. 

Our curriculum

CMES is home to an undergraduate concentration (Brown’s name for a “major”) in Middle East Studies. The concentration is highly flexible, in keeping with the spirit of Brown’s Open Curriculum. The requirements include one foundation course, four semesters of training in a Middle Eastern language (e.g. Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish), five electives, and a capstone project. Virtually any course related to the Middle East may serve as an elective, and in any given semester, the range of eligible courses is as broad as the disciplinary range of CMES’s faculty. Our students typically take advantage of the flexibility afforded by the concentration, enrolling in courses on ancient and medieval history, religious and philosophical thought, contemporary politics and economics, literature and the arts. 

Our community

In addition to its faculty, the CMES is home to an Undergraduate Student Group and the Middle East Studies Graduate Student Association (MESGSA). We invite all faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community members with an interest in the Middle East to get involved with our activities by signing up for our mailing list. Join us!