“Speaking about food or looking at old menus to explain the way culinary culture changes is one thing,” says Cemal Kafadar, Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies. “Hands-on exposure is another.” And so one evening in April, Kafadar led students in his course History 1878B: Ottoman State and Society, along with guests including CMES Visiting Researchers Bedriye Poyraz and Nil Tekgül, out of the classroom and into an industrial kitchen beneath freshman dining facility Annenberg Hall. There, under the guidance of acclaimed chef Ana Sortun—whose Cambridge-area restaurants Oleana, Sofra...

CMES awarded a first prize and two honorable mentions in the 2017–18 Harvard College International Photo Contest for photos taken in the Middle East region. All photos were from students’ internships, language study, and travel in the summer of 2017. First place went to Portia Berry-Kilby ('20), a NELC concentrator, focusing on Arabic and the Modern Middle East. The photo was taken while she attended Yale's Summer Study Abroad program in Morocco where she studied Arabic for the summer with the...

Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs today announced that CMES Steering Committee member Tarek Masoud, Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations, will serve as faculty chair of the Belfer Center’s Middle East Initiative. Masoud succeeds Nicholas Burns, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and the Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations. Read the complete...

Nicholas Norberg is a first-year student in the AM in Middle Eastern Studies program.... Read more about Profile: Nicholas Norberg

On the evening of April 26, nearly 100 members of our community gathered for a concert that brought to light the underappreciated contributions of women composers to Ottoman music. The event was held as part of the continuing Sohbet-i Osmani series organized by Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies Cemal Kafadar.... Read more about Music of Turkish-Ottoman Women Composers

Hamad Al-Hajri is a first-year student in the AM in Middle Eastern Studies program.... Read more about Profile: Hamad Al-Hajri

CMES is pleased to congratulate this year's graduating class of thirteen students who earned a master's degree in Regional Studies—Middle East and its graduating PhD students.... Read more about Congratulations, CMES Graduates 2017-18!

Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, was the distinguished speaker this year for the H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series, established in 1964 in honor of Sir Hamilton A.R. Gibb, who was a director of CMES as well as University Professor and James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic at Harvard. Meredyth Lynn Winter, PhD Candidate in History of Art and Architecture and Middle Eastern Studies, covered the lectures for CMES.... Read more about Variations on a Theme: 2018 H.A.R. Gibb Lectures Delivered by Nasser Rabbat

Nasser Rabbat, Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, MIT, delivers the first lecture of the 2018 H.A.R. Gibb Arabic and Islamic Studies Lecture Series.... Read more about Video: The Historian and the City Between Ibn Khaldun and al-Maqrizi

In 2017-18, Houssem Chachia was the inaugural recipient of the CMES Tunisia Postdoctoral Fellowship, part of the CMES Tunisia Office and related programming made possible by the support of Harvard College alumnus Hazem Ben-Gacem '92. The fellowship brings Tunisian scholars, especially those whose research includes Tunisia and North Africa, to Harvard for an academic year, to pursue their research and teach a course in their area of specialization.... Read more about Profile: Houssem Chachia