UCSB Center for Middle East Studies Spotlight Series

Founded in 1990, the Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) promotes the study of the Middle East, North Africa, and Islam at the University of California, Santa Barbara. CMES has long been a bastion of interdisciplinary scholarship, collectivity, and exchange. The last decade has witnessed a flourishing of CMES faculty and graduate students at UCSB across disciplines (Humanities, Social Sciences, and Sciences) and methodology (archival, ethnographic, quantitative, qualitative). CMES curates events geared to the campus academic community and broader public, including conferences, film series, musical performances, lectures, and book talks. It supports graduate studies of the Middle East, North Africa, and Islam through funding, conferences, symposia, and workshops. 

 

This year we embark on a series of events and programs that highlight the rich scholarship and research of UCSB’s faculty and students. The scholarly production and general wellbeing of graduate students is a priority at CMES. The Middle East and North Africa is a global place, it is a place that produces people, movements, theories, knowledges, and practices. It is place that can give us the tools to navigate our global precarity. CMES will embody and support this globality by building organically from the ground up, by investing in our rich human resources, and by offering a space to produce critical, grounded, innovative scholarship.

 

Mark your calendars for our year long “CMES Spotlight Series,”  details attached, as we feature the innovative research of the faculty and students that constitute our rich scholarly community across departments, initiatives, and programs at UCSB. 

12 October (5:00 PM PST)