The coursework introduces students to the complexity and diversity of the cultural and geographic regions that are represented in the Middle East and Islamic world with focuses on gender, history, religion, literature, popular discourses and politics.   

MEIS faculty are drawn from the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Hispanic Studies, History, Media and Cultural Studies, Religious Studies, Theatre, Political Science, and Women’s Studies. Their research and expertise canvass a vast and diverse area from Muslim Spain to Ottoman Greece, and North Africa, in the west, to Central Asia, Indonesia, and South Asia, in the east.  Thematically, MEIS faculty examine such issues as social, economic, urban, gender and legal history; Arabic language and literature; identity politics; media in India; theatre and representation; literary studies; state, society and religion; gender and modernity; Islamic movements; human rights; transnationality; and pluralism.

MEIS also attends to these themes in relation to language proficiency, broad information literacy, critical analysis, theoretical questions, research and writing skills, which the study of “regions” or “cultural areas” requires.