The Changing Face of Medieval Near Eastern Studies: Challenges and Strategies
Josef W. Meri, University of California, Berkeley

As we embrace the new millennium, the debate concerning the ever-changing role of area studies in the humanities curriculum and in funding and academic policies continues.  Middle Eastern Studies is facing a new policy and funding agenda, which is forcing institutions and departments to impose changes in teaching, research and funding and meant to bring Middle Eastern Studies in line with what are perceived as more relevant fields of study.  Accordingly, some Near Eastern Studies programs, which have continued to experience a decline in funding levels, have over the past decade placed greater emphasis on interdisci­plinary classes in comparative literature, history and religion.  Sometimes these changes have led to the marginalization of early and medieval Islamic history, culture and religion at public institutions.  Why offer a class in medieval Islamic history, while classes in the modern Middle East, comparative literature, or world history might attract higher undergraduate enrollment?   Faculty have not always succeeded in convincing university administration of the need to offer under­graduate seminars on various aspects of Islamic history, or devised ways of making pre-modern Near Eastern history and religion more appealing to undergraduates.

Teaching and training―Have public institutions failed in their obligation to offer undergraduates a rigorous program of training in Near Eastern Studies?  It is not so much a problem of institutional failure as it is the lack of a clear sense of the kind of training students require and the absence of faculty to actively promote and provide that training.  It is not uncommon for institutions to ask new faculty to teach classes on the modern Middle East and world history, thus affording them a diverse teaching experience.  Regrettably, many institutions do not possess the faculty, the students or the resources to allow medievalists to offer classes and seminars in their fields of specialization, let alone to offer students adequate training in Middle Eastern studies.  The plight of these institutions and the marginalized scholars who are the sole arbiters of Middle Eastern history, languages and religions has not been sufficiently addressed.  How then can we devise innovative ways to provide undergraduates with the tools to develop a capacity for critical thinking about the Middle East and for mastering Near Eastern languages?  At the opposite end, the undergraduate tutorial systems at Cambridge, Harvard and Oxford remain an effective means of honing language skills and ensuring that students get the training they require.  While it is no longer feasible for most American institutions to offer specialized undergraduate seminars in Abbasid belles-lettres or classical Arabic poetry, a balance should be struck between classical and interdisciplinary training.

Programs in the United States which offer training in early and medieval Islamic Studies at public institutions have over the past decade sustained faculty retirement, downsizing, re-organization and fewer and irregular course offerings.  However, during the past several years major transformations resulting in innovative course offerings, increased faculty hiring and substantial endowments are leading to the revitalization of Middle and Near Eastern Studies programs, such as at the University of California at Berkeley, and have led to the establish­ment of new programs in Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville and Drew University.  A number of public and private institutions including Berkeley, the University of Chicago, Harvard, Oxford and Princeton have led the way in offering interdisciplinary seminars and team taught courses which wed traditional and modern scholarship in early and medieval Islamic history, art history, archaeology and Arabic literature.  A number of successful undergradu­ate seminars at North American institutions include an art history seminar on pilgrimage at Harvard, and at Princeton undergraduate religious studies seminars on women, sexuality, travel literature and pilgrimage.  Although taught by medievalists, they are not always restricted to the medieval period.  Among the most successful graduate seminars are those which bring faculty and advanced students together to promote the vital exchange of ideas as in Oxford’s “Memori­alising the Prophet and His Family” seminar, which attracts as many faculty and visiting scholars as students.

Despite these significant transformations, more undergraduate and graduate students studying the pre-modern Middle East would benefit from required seminars in bibliography, historiography and research methods.  Unfortunately, only a handful of North American institutions offer research seminars in historiography and research methods, none of which are geared toward undergraduates.  Those that regularly offer seminars in Islamic and Near Eastern historiography include the University of Chicago, Harvard, McGill, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton and the University of Utah.  Although bibliography is often incorporated into historiography seminars, those devoted to traditional methods of bibliographical research and library databases should be an integral part of advanced under­graduate and graduate student training.

The dilemma of younger scholars and traditional scholarship―Colleagues have often commented how younger scholars do not possess the breadth and depth of classical training which has given pre-modern Near Eastern and Islamic Studies its character. Instead, they have a penchant for social-scientific and comparative methods. Younger scholars have tended to follow trends by producing studies incorporating interdisciplinary approaches. For instance, more medievalists and early modernists are researching the relatively unexplored field of family history. Whether by necessity or interest, we have taken interdiscipli­nary and comparative methods almost as scripture. Yet, we should not lose sight of editing and translating texts, which constitute the very essence of our field.  Conversely senior scholars have not readily identified with the increasing reliance of their younger colleagues on interdisciplinary methods, thus creating an ambiguous association. How might we bridge this gap?  One way is to annually host a number of working groups under the auspices of Middle East Medievalists and various learned societies in conjunction with Middle Eastern Studies centers and departments. Such working groups would focus on a theme such as social rebellion, urban movements, court ritual, publishing and transla­tion, and teaching and technology. The findings from these working groups might be delivered in final form at MEM pre-organized panels at meetings of scholarly societies like MESA and the American Oriental Society. This would have two desired effects  First, scholars would benefit from greater collaboration and feedback. Second, medievalists and modernists might collaborate more closely, particularly at the institutional level.

Embracing the electronic age―One way to make Near Eastern Studies more appealing to undergraduates and encourage greater student interest and interaction is through the use of Internet resources in the classroom environ­ment.  As in other fields, faculty members should be required to possess a mastery of library databases and Internet resources and integrate them into teaching.  A number of exemplary web sites for teaching Islamic Studies, include: Jerome Clinton’s al-Khazina (The Treasury) (http://www.princeton.edu/~humcomp/alkhaz.html), Alan Godlas’s Islamic Studies, Islam, Arabic, Religion (http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/home.html) and Barbara R. von Schlegell’s Resources for Islamic Studies (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~brvs/web.html).  In an on-line review essay, Corinne Blake suggests a number of approaches to Teaching Islamic Civilization with Information Technology (http://www.albany.  edu/jmmh/vol1no1/teach-islamic.html).  One noteworthy bibliographical site for early and medieval Islam is Rizwi Faizer’s Bibliography for Medieval Islam (http://www.cnwl.igs.net/~faizer/biblio/index.html).

Publishing―As John D’Arms, president of the American Council of Learned Societies, succinctly puts it, humanists need to develop approaches beyond “seeing texts and artifacts as mere reflections of their contexts, that recognize the emotional, aesthetic, spiritual, and moral dimensions of texts―their power to inspire.”  Even when scholars have succeeded in capturing this dynamic in words, publishers have not always been receptive.  Composing interdisciplinary works does not ensure publication.  As junior scholars embark on a career in academe they face the age-old problem of publishing the doctoral thesis.  Regrettably, publishers have become increasingly reluctant to publish doctoral theses.  However, those like Brill are at the forefront of publishing significant specialized works on the medieval Near East, including doctoral theses.  One academic publisher recently lamented the scholarly monograph, labeling it the victim of this cutback in quotas and diminishing returns.  Such academically unsound policies have resulted in a shift from specialized fields like early and medieval Near Eastern Studies to more lucrative fields.  Moreover, it is, as many of us have experienced, becoming increasingly difficult to publish critical editions and annotated translations of primary sources.  Some publishers are contem­plating making texts available on CD-ROM or on-line.  This trend will be facili­tated by the implementation of the international Unicode standard (http://www.unicode.org).  With the adoption of Unicode-based software by publishers, academic institutions and scholars for word-processing, desktop publishing and e-mail, we are bound to see further innovations in the exchange of ideas and in publishing in Near Eastern languages.  Microsoft’s recently released Windows2000 operating system, and “office suites” like Microsoft Office 2000 fully support combining Unicode Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish and European fonts in a single document.  We will be able to transmit a one-hundred-page text to a publisher in camera-ready format without worrying about converting it from one format to another or combining Near Eastern and European languages.  As this software becomes more readily available, eventu­ally we will be able to communicate more easily with colleagues in the Near East.

With publishing opportunities for specialized monographs drying up, MESA, MEM and other learned societies must cooperate with publishers and academic institutions to study the underlying effects of changes in publishing programs and their impact on teaching and research.  Some publishers have proposed a two-year introduction of select works on the Internet with the subsequent release of a paperback edition.  How will this impact the publication of monographs, which could be used in teaching?  While authors may benefit from wider circulation of their ideas and readers from cheaper costs, we should not merely substitute one medium for another.  Already publishers like the University of California Press and Columbia University Press are providing, on an experimental basis, free access at their web sites to select full-length mono­graphs.  Early and medieval Near Eastern Studies are not represented as yet.  Recognizing the need to address these issues, the American Council of Learned Societies in conjunction with seven university presses and five learned societies, including MESA, have launched over five years a new and innovative initiative in publishing historical monographs on-line.  What this means for the future of publishing in Near and Middle Eastern Studies remains to be seen.

A basis for further discussion―Ensuring the future of Near Eastern Studies requires that we take decisive steps.  It is hoped that the following points in addition to those raised earlier will generate further discussion of these critical issues.  We would have a broader base from which to realize the potential of our disciplines and bring them more into the mainstream of the humanities if we:

1) adopted a more pro-active outreach agenda.  Granted, outreach is seen as more of an institutional function than as the responsibility and intellec­tual imperative of individual scholars.  Nevertheless, medievalists should not regard themselves as exempt from outreach activities by virtue of their speciali­zation.  Medievalists, like their colleagues who specialize in the modern Middle East, have a valuable role to play as ambassadors to their communities.  Among our ranks are those who have served as a resource to the World Affairs Council, synagogues, churches, mosques and community centers.  We must be involved in fundraising efforts that make available outreach resources such as university museum and art collections to members of the public.  Some of us serve as consultants to governmental bodies whenever the need arises.  Our knowledge of history, cultures and religions should not be confined to the academy,

2) reached out to colleagues and students in the Middle East not only through invaluable academic exchanges like the Fulbright program but also through making our research more accessible by collaborating with publishers in the Middle East to provide affordable paperback editions and translations.  Western scholarship has not been widely disseminated among students and scholars throughout the Middle East partly because expensive monographs are beyond the reach of libraries and individuals, because of the language barrier, and because the way in which we write about the Middle East is not always understood and appreciated.  It is not that traditional scholarship in the Middle East conflicts with Western scholarship or even that this dichotomy is wholly valid, but that we have not found the means to bridge the gap between scholars that would provide a basis for an ongoing scholarly dialogue.  Scholars from the Middle East and the Islamic world who have not been visible at conferences in the United States and Europe have an essential role to play in facilitating this dialogue,

3) wrote studies that demonstrate the importance of our field to non-spe­cialists.  This does not necessarily mean writing studies that reach out to those interested in the modern Middle East.  However, it does mean reaching out to those in other humanistic disciplines,

4) encouraged further cooperative projects which could possibly be jointly funded by institutions and learned societies.  Such projects could focus on editing and translating multi-volume works in primary languages and eventually making them available to institutional members on CD-ROM or secure web-sites,

5) studied ways in which to strengthen curricula in Near Eastern Studies, particularly at public institutions and facilitate closer cooperation through effective outreach between institutions with Middle Eastern Studies programs and those without.

Active promotion of our field as part of a broader area studies agenda, which accords it a more central role in institutional humanities decision making processes, requires us to forge an active dialogue with our colleagues in other humanistic and social-scientific fields, particularly scholars of medieval Europe and historians of religion.  It requires that we take the initiative in interesting our colleagues and academic policy makers in our teaching and research, and for us to engage non-specialist colleagues at our home institutions in a creative dialogue aimed at implementing constructive ways of promoting the exchange of ideas on broad themes of common interest.

Bibliography

John H. D’Arms, “Pressing Issues for a New Generation of Humanists,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 2, 1999.
Leila Fawaz, “Swimming Against the Tide: Personal Passions and Academic Fashions,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, July 1998.
David L. Haberman and Jan Nattier, “Whatever became of Translation?” Religious Studies News, 11 (1996), p. 6.
Rashid Khalidi, “Is There a Future for Middle Eastern Studies?” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, July 1995.