Middle Eastern Studies
Master of Arts (in Middle Eastern Studies)
Master of Arts (in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures)
Doctor of Philosophy (in Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures)
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies administers the master’s degree in Middle Eastern studies. The Department of Middle Eastern Studies administers the master’s and doctoral degree programs in Middle Eastern languages and cultures.
For More Information
Campus address: Calhoun Hall (CAL) 528, phone (512) 471-3881, fax (512) 471-7834; campus mail code: F9400
Mailing address: The University of Texas at Austin, Graduate Program, Middle Eastern Studies, 204 W 21st Street Stop F9400, Austin TX 78712
URL: http://liberalarts.utexas.edu/mes/index.php
Facilities for Graduate Work
University library holdings on the Middle East form one of the leading collections in North America. These include 150,000 volumes and 1,230 serial titles in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, Tajiki, and Azerbaijani, and more than 160,500 volumes in Western languages. This collection includes a comprehensive set of English-language reference works, general texts, basic monographs, and essential journals on the Middle East. Among the special collections are strong holdings on Shi’ism, Islamic jurisprudence, and Arabic and Persian literature; a set of Arabic manuscripts on the Yezidis of Yemen; a virtually complete set of Turkish and Azerbaijani periodicals that forms a unique national resource; and more than 2,000 volumes of census records on Middle Eastern countries. The University Libraries has the largest collection of South African Jewish materials in the United States, both in belles lettres and in periodicals. Electronic material supporting Middle Eastern studies is also extensive and includes electronic databases such as JSTOR and ATLA; the Perry-Castañeda digitized map collection; the Encyclopedia of Islam; Records on Islam: Primary Documents; The Encyclopaedia Judaica; and the Judaic Classics Library. The department has also donated to the main library a collection of approximately four thousand English-language books and reference works, some 10,000 digitized slides, and hundreds of films and periodicals. The Harry Ransom Center holds writers’ personal papers, including those of T. E. Lawrence, Paul Bowles, Freya Stark, Richard Burton, and others with a special Middle Eastern connection. The Ransom Center has significant holdings relating to Judaica, including the Isaac Bashevis Singer Archive, the Leon Uris Archive, and a portion of the literary archive of Bernard Malamud. The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History holds the Development Communication Archive, donated by the federal Agency for International Development, which consists of more than 350 linear feet of original records on issues ranging from agriculture and the environment to health and community development; about a quarter of the documents cover Middle Eastern projects. University faculty members and students also have access to vast centralized resources such as the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago and the Yale University-sponsored OACIS project.
Areas of Study
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies offers the Master of Arts with a major in Middle Eastern studies, an interdisciplinary degree with a regional concentration on the Middle East. Many students in this program enter careers in academia, business, communication, government, global policy studies, public affairs, information studies, law, and the military. There is a good deal of flexibility in meeting degree requirements; each student, in consultation with the graduate adviser, designs an individual program within the framework of the requirements described in Degree Requirements.
The Department of Middle Eastern Studies offers master’s and doctoral degrees in Middle Eastern languages and cultures. Students at the master’s level may concentrate in teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL). At the doctoral level, students select a field of study from among the following: linguistics (theoretical linguistics or language pedagogy), literatures/cultures, Hebrew Bible/ancient Near East, or Islamic studies.
Graduate Studies Committee
The following faculty members served on the Graduate Studies Committee in the spring 2019 semester.
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Ari Adut Ahmad Agbaria Kamran S Aghaie Mahmoud M Al-Batal Olla N Al-Shalchi Kamran Ali Germine Gigi Awad Samy Ayoub Hina Azam Zoltan D Barany Benjamin Claude Brower Jason M Brownlee Kristen Brustad Mounira M Charrad Rasha Diab David J Eaton Mohammad Ghanoonparvar Kate Gillespie Karen Grumberg Jo Ann Hackett Geraldine Heng John Huehnergard |
Syed A Hyder Jonathan Kaplan Mikiya Koyagi William R Louis Sofian Merabet Mohammad A Mohammad A Azfar Moin Stephennie Mulder Mary C Neuburger Jeannette Okur Thomas G Palaima Athanasio Papalexandrou Na'ama Pat-El Esther L Raizen Sonia T Seeman Faegheh S Shirazi Denise A Spellberg Jeremi Suri Alexander Ariel Weinreb Bruce Wells Karin G Wilkins |
Admission Requirements
Master of Arts
Middle Eastern studies. The entering student must have a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university. While the Center admits students holding a variety of undergraduate degrees, previous academic work on the region and some proficiency in one of its languages is recommended.
Middle Eastern languages and cultures. Admission to the program with a focus in teaching Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL) requires a bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university and advanced proficiency in Arabic, including one spoken dialect.
Doctor of Philosophy
Middle Eastern languages and cultures. Because scholarship in Middle Eastern languages and cultures requires a high degree of language proficiency, students normally complete a Master of Arts in the area of concentration before acceptance into the PhD program. In exceptional cases, the Graduate Admissions Committee may take extensive study outside of a master’s program into account. For students specializing in a living language tradition, advanced proficiency in the language of concentration is required. Students focusing on the ancient Near East must have three years of biblical Hebrew (including study of biblical Aramaic), one year of a second ancient Semitic language, and either a second year of the same ancient Semitic language or proficiency in German, as well as background in the study of the Hebrew Bible.