Hear opening remarks from donor Hazem Ben-Gacem AB '92, CMES Director William Granara, Margot Gill, Administrative Dean for International Affairs, Harvard University, and Malika Zeghal, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor in Contemporary Islamic Thought and Life, Harvard University, at the inaugural celebration of the Tunisia Office of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Harvard University.

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Harvard’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies opened its first field office in Tunisia last Tuesday in an effort to expand Harvard’s global presence and provide resources for scholarship in the Middle East and North Africa region. Read more in the Harvard Crimson.

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at Harvard University today opened its first overseas office, in Tunisia, home to a tradition of learning and research that extends from Antiquity to the present. The office and the year-round programs run from the location are made possible by the support of Harvard College alumnus Hazem Ben-Gacem ’92.

“The Middle East is a part of the world that you’ll never fully understand unless you get your feet on the ground and experience it first-hand,” said William Granara, CMES Director and Professor of Arabic. “Thanks to Hazem’s generosity, Read more about Center for Middle Eastern Studies Opens Field Office in Tunisia

Presentations in English with Arabic recitations. Presented by the CMES Working Group on Middle East Literature in Transition: New Frontiers in the 21st Century.

• "Mahmud Qabadu: Poet of the Islamic Nahda in XIXth-century Tunisia," Youssef Ben Ismail
• "Archaeological Poetics: Archiving Ottoman History in Ahmad Shawqi’s Works," Ceyhun Arslan
• "Badr Shakir al-Sayyab: Breaking the Backbone of Poetry," Daniel Behar
• "Ahmad Fuad Nagm: Political Poetry in the Vernacular," Sarah Moawad
• "Humanizing the Other: A Reading in Mahmud Darwish’s Poems," Yousif Read more about Video: Sahra Shi’riyya (An Evening of Poetry)

We often regard print as a motor of social change, leaving revolutions in its wake. For historians of the Middle East, this line of thought leads to the (predictable) question: why didn’t Muslims or Ottomans or Arabs adopt print? In a new episode of the series "History of Science, Ottoman or Otherwise," a feature of the Ottoman History Podcast, CMES alumna Kathryn Schwartz (PhD '15) and host Nir Shafir discuss why this question is often poorly posed, and take an in-depth look at how and why people used print in one particular historical context: nineteenth-century Cairo. Read more about Audio: A New History of Print in Ottoman Cairo

Caitlin Schiffer, a reporter for BUTV10, Boston University's television station, produced this video piece about the April 16-17 performances of Feathers of Fire, a groundbreaking cinematic shadow play based on the Persian epic Shahnemeh (The Book of Kings), hosted by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the Fitzgerald Theatre in Cambridge. Read more about Video: Behind the Scenes of Feathers of Fire