DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER:
Professor Michael Gilsenan

ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF THE CENTER:
Shiva Balaghi

DIRECTOR OF GRADUATE STUDIES:
Assistant Professor Ilana Feldman

The Hagop Kevorkian Center supports advanced study, graduate training, and public education on the modern Middle East. It offers an M.A. program in modern Near Eastern studies and M.A. programs that combine the study of the Middle East with journalism, museum studies, and business.

The Center’s intellectual focus is on the contemporary political economy and cultures of the Middle East and the historical processes that have shaped the present. Center faculty are drawn from across a number of departments and schools at NYU, including the Departments of Anthropology, Art History, Comparative Literature, History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and Politics and the Institute of Fine Arts. Besides the graduate program, the Center runs conferences and workshops for the discussion of new research in the field of Middle Eastern studies. Many of these events reach beyond the Middle East to explore interactions and parallels with Europe, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Central Asia.

The M.A. program is designed for (1) those thinking of entering a Ph.D. program but wanting first to explore different disciplines or advance their knowledge of the region and its languages and (2) those planning a career in a field such as journalism, public service, cultural organizations, human rights, or political advocacy and seeking to understand the region’s cultures, politics, and histories and to engage with questions of cultural production and economic and social transformation. Language study is an integral component of the M.A. and the Middle East curriculum. NYU offers three-year programs for Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu and a four-year program of Arabic study.

The Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies (MEIS) offers a separate program of study leading to the Ph.D. degree. The Program in Ancient Near Eastern and Egyptian Studies (ANEES) offers an M.A. and a Ph.D. degree. Please see their respective listings in this bulletin.

Hagop Kevorkian Center

The Hagop Kevorkian Center organizes academic forums and public events to encourage new understandings of the politics, cultures, and history of the Middle East and related world regions. Students in the M.A. program benefit from the Center’s conferences, workshops, and public symposia and from the presence of the visiting scholars and intellectuals who participate in them.

The Center’s regular events include the Research Workshop Series, which brings leading scholars from the United States and abroad to discuss their research-in-progress with faculty and graduate students from within New York University and beyond; a luncheon seminar series for informal discussions with Middle East writers, filmmakers, human rights workers, political actors, and scholars; a Visual Culture Series, bringing together artists, filmmakers, and scholars of cultural studies; intensive faculty workshops for groups of scholars writing and teaching on similar topics across world regions; and annual symposia in fields such as postcolonial theory, Islamic arts and cultures, Arabic literature, and law and society. In recent years, the Center has held faculty workshops on topics such as Islam and the public sphere, mixing oil and politics, and government and humanity.

A leader in language acquisition pedagogy, the Center has recently convened several national conferences on less commonly taught languages (Arabic, Hindi, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu). In its programming, the Center regularly partners with organizations such as the Tribeca Film Festival, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Asia Society; with universities such as Columbia University, the New School, and the University of California at Santa Barbara; and with departments and programs within NYU such as the Center for Religion and Media, the Taub Center for Israeli Studies, and the Departments of Anthropology, History, and Politics.

Visiting scholars in previous years who have stayed and in many cases taught at the Center for periods ranging from two weeks to one semester include Michel Callon, Sociology, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines; Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Sociology, American University in Cairo; Huricihan Islamog˘lu, Bog˘aziçi University; Ayse Bugra Kavala, Economics, Bog˘aziçi University, and Director, Center for Comparative Institutional and Economic Change; Isam Khafaji, Political Economy and International Relations, University of Amsterdam; Yoav Peled, Political Science, Tel Aviv University; Dan Rabinowitz, Sociology, Hebrew University; Salim Tamari, Sociology, Birzeit University, and Director, Institute for Jerusalem Studies.

The Center, designated as one of 17 federally funded Middle East National Resource Centers, serves secondary schools, colleges, the media, and the general public as a source of information and education about the Middle East. The Center runs teacher training workshops and provides curricular support for secondary educators. The Center cosponsors the Middle East Desk Web site at www.middleeastdesk.org, providing information for journalists covering the Middle East, and Center faculty provide frequent interviews and information to the print and broadcast media.

The Hagop Kevorkian Center, together with the Department of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, is housed in its own building, designed by Philip Johnson, on Washington Square. The building contains faculty offices, seminar rooms, an auditorium, a computer laboratory, and the Richard Ettinghausen Library, which includes current journals, reference works, and study areas. The library and lobby of the building incorporate decorative elements from an 18th-century Damascene house, including a mosaic fountain, boiserie, and a muqarnas (stalactite) niche.

Faculty

Michael Gilsenan, David B. Kriser Professor of the Humanities; Professor, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Anthropology; Director, Hagop Kevorkian Center. D.Phil. (social anthropology) 1967, Dip.Anth. 1964, B.A 1963 (Arabic), Oxford.
Arabs in Hadhramaut and Southeast Asia 1850-present; law and society in British colonial Southeast Asia; anthropology of Arab societies; urban studies; forms of power and hierarchy.

Shiva Balaghi, Associate Director, Hagop Kevorkian Center. Ph.D. 1998, Michigan; B.A. 1988, Emory.
Iranian cultural history; gender studies; history of colonialism and nationalism in the Middle East.

Ilana Feldman, Assistant Professor/Faculty Fellow. Ph.D. 2002, Michigan; M.A. 1994, New York; B.A. 1991 Wesleyan.
Middle East anthropology and history; government and bureaucracy; colonialism; humanitarianism; Gaza.

Note: Courses in the program are taught by faculty from the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, and Politics. Individual faculty research interests are listed under their home departments and in more detail on the Center’s Web site.

AFFILIATED FACULTY IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS

Modern Middle East

Peter J. Chelkowski, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Assia Djebar, French; David Engel, Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Sibel Erol, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Khaled Fahmy, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Yael Feldman, Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Ahmed A. Ferhadi, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; K. Fleming, History, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Program in Hellenic Studies; Michael Gilsenan, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Anthropology; Michael Gomez, History; Bruce Grant, Anthropology; Hala Halim, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Comparative Literature; Bernard Haykel, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Rosalie Kamelhar, Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Deborah Anne Kapchan, Performance Studies; Farhad Kazemi, Politics; Mehdi Khorrami, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Elias Khoury, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Zachary Lockman, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Robert D. McChesney, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Mona N. Mikhail, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Ali Mirsepassi, Gallatin School of Individualized Study; Timothy P. Mitchell, Politics; M. Ishaq Nadiri, Economics; Leslie Peirce, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, History; Ella Shohat, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, Art and Public Policy (Tisch School of the Arts); Ronald Zweig, Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

Early Islamic and Medieval Middle East

Tamer el-Leithy, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Finbarr Barry Flood, Art History; Marion Katz, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Philip Kennedy, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Francis E. Peters, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Everett Rowson, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Priscilla P. Soucek, Fine Arts; Eliot R. Wolfson, Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

Pre-Islamic Near East

Joan Connelly, Fine Arts; Daniel Fleming, Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Ogden Goelet, Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies; Donald P. Hansen, Fine Arts; Thomas F. Mathews, Fine Arts; David O'Connor, Fine Arts; Ann Macy Roth, Hebrew and Judaic Studies, Art History; Lawrence H. Schiffman, Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Mark Smith, Hebrew and Judaic Studies; Rita Wright, Anthropology, Fine Arts.