Alumni News

Sufi lodge (tekke) at Blagaj

Water from Stone

September 16, 2022

In a special episode of the Ottoman History Podcast, Sam Dolbee and CMES Academic Programs Manager and Associate Director of the AM Program Jesse Howell, History and MES PhD '17, travel by bike along the Ćiro Trail from Dubrovnik in Croatia to Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where they meet fellow Ottoman historian Marijana Mišević, History and MES PhD '22. Along the way, they consider the legacy and traces of early modern Ottoman...

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Cooperson Gibb 2022 group

The Gibb Lecture Series 2022: Two Talks by Michael Cooperson

May 27, 2022

by Hacı Osman Gündüz, PhD Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations

After two years of dormancy due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Hamilton A. R. Gibb Lecture Series was back in action in March 2022. The series is the tāj (crown) of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, as CMES Director William Granara, Gordon Gray Professor of the Practice of Arabic, described it. The series was established in 1964 with funds provided by Mr. John Goelet, who was a student of Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb (d. 1976), the former James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic and University Professor at Harvard University. This year’s guest speaker was Michael Cooperson, Professor of Arabic at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is the first speaker of the series to have completed all his higher education—AB ('87), AM ('91), and PhD ('94) —at Harvard..... Read more about The Gibb Lecture Series 2022: Two Talks by Michael Cooperson

Badriyyah AlSabah

CMES Alum Badriyyah Alsabah Talks with NPR about Kuwaiti Trans Woman Imprisoned for "Impersonating the Opposite Sex"

October 29, 2021

NPR's Sarah McCammon speaks with activist and recent CMES AM graduate Badriyyah Alsabah, a research and policy fellow with the Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth, about Maha Al-Mutairi, a trans woman in Kuwait who was sentenced to two years in prison for "impersonating the opposite sex." Listen to the story or read the...

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The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics, and Community

The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics, and Community

March 30, 2021

In the latest program in the New Books Network’s Middle East Studies Series, History and Middle Eastern Studies PhD candidate Deren Ertas talks with Ayfer Karakaya-Stump (PhD 2008), Associate Professor of History at the College of William and Mary, about her recently published monograph, The Kizilbash-Alevis in Ottoman Anatolia: Sufism, Politics, and...

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Medhini Kumar near Lake Tiberias

Q&A With Medhini Kumar

February 4, 2021

Medhini Kumar is a 2016 graduate of the CMES AM Program in Middle Eastern Studies. She currently works as Communications Manager for UNRWA USA, an American nonprofit that is committed to bettering the lives of Palestine refugees through advocacy efforts in the United States and fundraising for United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) programs in the Middle East.... Read more about Q&A With Medhini Kumar

Big Apple Film Festival laurels

"#After Lockdown" Selected to Screen as Part of Big Apple Film Festival

October 26, 2020

#After Lockdown: Very Short Stories about Enduring a Global Pandemic, a short film designed by NYC-based animation studio Mr Sebs and co-produced by Harvard University's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and Center for Hellenic Studies, has been selected to screen as part of the Big Apple Film Festival 2020 Fall Edition.... Read more about "#After Lockdown" Selected to Screen as Part of Big Apple Film Festival

Leila Fawaz, photo by George Ellmore

Harvard Alumni Association honors Leila T. Fawaz with the 2020 Harvard Medal

May 18, 2020

The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA) has announced that David L. Evans; Leila T. Fawaz, AM '72, PhD '79; and Joseph J. O'Donnell '67, MBA '71, will receive the 2020 Harvard Medal. The award recognizes extraordinary service to the University in a variety of areas, such as teaching, fundraising, leadership, and innovation. Fawaz, Issam M. Fares Professor of Lebanese and Eastern Mediterranean Studies at Tufts University, was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers from 1996 to 2012 and has been a member of visiting committees at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and...

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MERIP Voices from the East thumbnail

Voices from the Middle East: How COVID-19 Is Threatening the Region's Most Vulnerable Populations

April 22, 2020

The Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), whose Executive Director, Mandy Terc, is a 2004 graduate the Center for Middle Eastern Studies' AM program, has launched a new Q&A series called "Voices from the Middle East," including interviews with people on the ground describing how COVID-19 is threatening the MENA region's most vulnerable populations. There are interviews with an Iranian pharmaceutical executive trying to produce medicine under sanctions, an ER doctor in Gaza describing how the blockade makes medical resources scarce, a...

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