“Mecca is lived, experienced, and documented differently by different people,” began Rosie Bsheer, Assistant Professor of History at Harvard and author of the forthcoming “Archive Wars: Spectacle, Speculation, and the Politics of History in Saudi Arabia,” in her keynote address to the colloquium Mecca: The Lived City, hosted by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies in May.
Mecca is characterized by plurality. In two days of lectures, speakers drew on academic, professional, and personal experiences to explore disparate visions of Mecca. The city’s social,...
For almost 16 years, Professor William Granara has served as the Director of Modern Language Programs in Harvard's Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Ozzy Gündüz (G3) and Johannes Makar (G2) sat down with him to reflect on his experiences, research projects and love of Arabic and Arabic literature. Read the complete interview on the NELC website.
In summer 2018, Gordon Gray Professor of Arabic and CMES Director William Granara, along with Khaled al-Masri, Associate Professor of Arabic at Swarthmore, led undergraduates on a Harvard Summer School program in Aix-en-Provence, France. The program, which Granara has led for several years, brings together students of Arabic and French language and culture to examine historical, literary, and cultural aspects of Arab and European interactions in the colonial and postcolonial eras. Andrew Aoyama ’21 wrote about his experience on the trip.... Read more about Arab and European Interactions in Aix-en-Provence
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the Byzantine Studies Research Center (BSRC) at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul have been awarded a three-year research grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a joint initiative providing enhanced and extended opportunities for teaching and research on the Byzantine Empire, placed in the larger context of the medieval Eastern Mediterranean world, with a strong focus on cross-cultural contacts and comparative perspectives.
One of the primary goals of the collaboration is to contribute to the development of the newly...
