There is something unsurprising and perhaps timely in the current surge of academic interest in the Middle East and the Islamic world as fields of study and cultural fascination. Never before have these regions been a topic of such heated and intense debate, analysis and observation from academics and students in the West.
The Middle East region has featured prominently in the current affairs of the past two decades, ranging from the 9/11 terrorist attacks to the Arab Spring, right up to the present day with the rise of the Islamic State (ISIS) and the current refugee crisis. Naturally, the academic world of political scientists, historians, anthropologists and economists, to name a few disciplines, has taken heed.
The prominence of Middle Eastern and Islamic societies in discussion has not gone unnoticed by Trinity. This year, two new initiatives have been all but given the green light for development.
First is the establishment of Trinity’s new Al Maktoum Centre for Islamic Studies. At a meeting of the College Board on January 27th, the Centre was described as “an exciting strategic move” for the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies that “will complement the strengths of the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies and will significantly enhance the expertise in this area”. It is expected that the centre will be successfully established, though a final agreement has yet to be signed.
Supported by a €5.5 million donation from the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation of the Royal House of Dubai, the centre expects to “be entirely secular in its approach, with religion researched in terms of its effects on the cultural, historical and political development of the regions only”. In terms of geographic scope, it will focus on the Islamic world, which spans the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia.
Second is a new undergraduate programme to be offered from the 2017/18 academic year and onwards: a BA in European and Middle Eastern studies. On the discussion table since 2015, and finally approved at a University Council meeting on January 13th, 2016, this programme combines elements from the already existing interdisciplinary European studies undergraduate programme. It will also include modules and language study organised by the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, primarily focusing on the history and culture of the region. The course proposal document, seen by The University Times, is resoundingly optimistic about its impact, claiming that this course will be the only one of its kind in the UK and Ireland.
But up until the introduction of these initiatives, and more broadly until around 2012 when the Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies was established in Trinity, a glance through the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences pages of College’s undergraduate prospectus wasn’t entirely inspiring. Area studies programmes in Trinity and in Ireland are largely limited to larger European societies, with nods to the Americas and the occasional module in Asian and African politics and postcolonial literature. The incorporation of Chinese area studies into broader business and social science programmes has also been witnessed in Ireland in recent years. Yet, even with our much-improved understanding of the 193 sovereign nations spanning six populated continents and including 7,000 languages, Trinity’s interdisciplinary studies – and those of the majority of the West’s universities – have until recently been grounded in the largely Anglo-Saxon impact and viewpoint of world affairs.
That’s not to say Trinity is particularly weak in the area. Our own Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies forms a part of the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies. The Trinity-based Herzog Centre is Ireland’s only dedicated centre for the study of the cultures and religious practices of the Near East. In addition to this is the Weingreen Museum, tucked away on the fifth floor of the Arts Building, which is home to artifacts sourced from the Mediterranean to Mesopotamia. But save for a smattering of modules in Islamic law, gender studies and modernity, Trinity’s Middle Eastern focus is arguably on the antiquarian, scriptural, and the classical side of representation. Nevertheless, it is clear that Trinity is about to capitalise on what is an undoubtable growth in the interest of students to study the Middle East and broader Islamic societies, driven by closer-than-ever contact with these worlds on a daily basis.
Even with our much-improved understanding of the 193 sovereign nations spanning six populated continents and including 7,000 languages, Trinity’s interdisciplinary studies – and those of the majority of the West’s universities – have until recently been grounded in the largely Anglo-Saxon impact
As Ireland further establishes this area of research, it is worth asking how it compares to similar efforts the world over. Demand plays an enormous factor in determining the presence and depth of interdisciplinary courses on the Middle East and Islam. Even though TSM Jewish and Islamic Civilisations has only accepted a maximum of 10 students through the CAO in recent years – only slightly below that of the proposed new interdisciplinary BA – there is a demand. Indeed, the course proposal for the new programme states: “The School’s Global Officer, Dr Julia Maher, has already carried out market research on the US market and found the interest in such a degree to be significant, not least because of the increasing interest in the Middle East and Middle Eastern languages in the US over the past decade.”
Tying into demand from students for such a course is, of course, a pre-existing interest. “A lot of incoming students have been to the region and have travelled it”, says Dr Hannes Baumann of King’s College London’s (KCL) Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, speaking to The University Times. “It’s not that they are coming in as completely uninformed – the existing engagement with the Middle East and with Arab countries has been growing on many levels.” Baumann notes that many students on KCL’s postgraduate courses often offer their own perspectives in a productive way: “There are a lot of journalists and mid-career professionals who have worked in the Middle East, looking to take the next step in their career. And they do that by taking a year out, getting a qualification, and reflecting on what they’ve seen through academia. It’s very good for us because we academics learn from the students. A lot are from the region as well.”
For Dr Betty Anderson, an associate professor of history at Boston University and director of the university’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, it’s a question of the extent to which prospective students are pre-equipped with the knowledge of what is being discussed. She tells The University Times: “I’ve been teaching at Boston University for 16 years, and people knew far far less about the area when I started. Nowadays, most students already know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, for example, because it’s in the news so often. But then what happens is that we have to spend more time filling in the gaps of information that the news doesn’t always talk about.”
Speaking of the field and its rise in popularity, Anderson highlights the difference in the American context of the studies. She notes how, shortly after 9/11, courses pertaining to the Middle East saw their numbers “overflowing”. “Students were dying to know more about Islam and the region, and what historically was the relationship between America, Europe and the Middle East. There were also lots of students taking classes in Arabic and Persian, so that they could eventually go to those places and speak to people.”
The complexity of the region adds another layer to the challenges Trinity faces in executing a programme that fits the goals of the College to be a global standard in education. Those familiar with the region and Islam know all too well the faux pas of confusing Arab and Persian societies, or believing that Islam is limited only to this region when, in fact, its highest population of adherents is in Indonesia.
If Trinity truly wants to engage in a competitive way with the field, it has to take this complexity into account. Though a recent concentration in biblical and ancient studies may have been a comfortable position for College, continuous adaptation is key. Universities such as KCL and Boston University, where such studies thrive, all enshrine multiple disciplines and fields in their multifaceted research on the Middle East. “I think what these programmes offer are tools to analyse the region”, says Baumann. “We’re not ‘current affairs’ courses – most courses include a background in the histories of these countries since the beginning of the 20th century, and they usually include the perspective of different disciplines. When we look at issues, we ask ourselves, how would an anthropologist approach these theories? What tools from political sciences can we use to understand democratisation, or the lack of democratisation, in some countries?”
Dr Hassan Hakimian, Director of the London Middle East Institute and Reader in Economics with Reference to the Middle East at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) agrees on the fundamental importance of such a multi-pronged approach. Speaking to The University Times, he says: “The main challenge that any university would face if they are interested in area studies, of any kind, is figuring out how to wed the relationship between disciplines and areas.”
He continues: “In SOAS, we have a matrix structure where we have the main disciplines [such as political science, history and economics] interlaced with ‘vertical columns’, where we specialise in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Here sitting in each and every different cell is an academic who has a foot in a discipline department, but they can also specialise within a region or subregion. This is what drives the nature of our specialisation. Any other university with a genuine interest in area studies will have to manage this interaction judiciously in order to be credible and offer important innovation in this field. For our part, it’s a very good thing that other departments and universities are going in the direction that SOAS has been going in a long time.”
But more than ever, the volatile and often dramatic state of Middle Eastern current affairs always keeps the area study on its toes, ready to adapt and look freshly at new questions. “It’s very difficult to know how lasting these influences will be”, Hakimian says, adding: “but there is no doubt that, thinking over the last five to 10 years, interest in subjects such as political Islam, religious extremism and the rise of non-state powers has occupied what one could say is a disproportionate amount of interest in the field. And this is what has added flavour to the subject. As with any discipline what is likely to happen to the intellectual tradition and research is determined by what happens on the ground, and whether these developments prove to be lasting.”
To its credit, Trinity is headed in the right direction in terms of getting that interdisciplinary balance right. The BA in European Studies is an ambitious combination of history, economics, political science, sociology and language study. The trick for those at the helm of the new BA incorporating the Middle East will be the combination of those disciplines that Hakimian sees as the key to such a programme’s success, which acknowledges the complexity of such a region. It also points to what could be a weakness in the current TSM Jewish and Islamic Civilisations programme, whose course catalogue is notable for its history and theology-heavy modules.
Nevertheless, studies of antiquity and religion are far from irrelevant in modern times. Asked whether ancient, historical and cultural aspects can stay relevant in a more current-affairs-dominated environment, Anderson says: “I think they are always relevant – understanding people in societies is very important, and sometimes when the focus is on security studies or international politics it leaves out a lot of the human factors and historical contexts. But I do think we need them both together to understand today’s politics.”
Hakimian agrees with the importance of cultural and linguistic background understandings: “Serious students and scholars of the region realise that in order to gain insight and acquire access to primary sources, they need to be able to acquire linguistic skills as well. I’m not saying that social sciences have risen at the expense of languages or cultures, but this is definitely a complementary process.” Indeed, the presence of Arabic, Hebrew and Turkish modules in the new Trinity BA, and even today in the TSM Jewish and Islamic Civilisations course, reflect this.
Hakimian adds, though, that there is a natural progression and evolution in what is discussed in such courses: “More broadly I think we have witnessed a transformation in our approach to area studies such as those of the Middle East – in the past it was mainly the domain of languages and cultures, humanities and the study of religion. I think nowadays social sciences have also acquired a significance in shaping and influencing discussions and studies.”
Some disciplines still find it tough to garner the attention of Middle East scholars. When asked about Middle East-related fields that could benefit from further research, Baumann says: “If people look at the Middle East today, they often look at terrorism, or religious politics. They often don’t look at the economy. At KCL, we have an MA programme in Middle Eastern political economy, which is something quite rare. I wish that was more reflected generally across the field, because if you look at the Arab Spring and the protests that overthrew Mubarak, people were making social and economic demands. We also have to study how inequality is being produced.”
Serious students and scholars of the region realise that in order to gain insight and acquire access to primary sources, they need to be able to acquire linguistic skills as well.
As Trinity aims to bring its new course and centre to an international standard, it will have to bear collaborative challenges in mind, because when it comes to area studies more so than any other field, maintaining that unbroken link to the very ground where one’s academic interests are is vital. Today, however, this can be challenging: political crackdowns, governmental restrictions and war have impeded collaboration between Western and Eastern universities, and have rendered all but inaccessible some historical and archaeological sites.
On this, Baumann says: “Because of the authoritarian backlash in a lot of countries, and secondly the violent conflict in Syria, it’s becoming more difficult and challenging to research, and to study the language. For instance, myself and a cohort of my age group, a lot of us studied Arabic in Damascus. A time when Syria was opening up politically, there were hundreds if not thousands of language students. That’s stopped. Yemen also had this kind of language tourism, which is really not there anymore. They were very good places to study the language. The red lines are becoming tighter.” Both Baumann and Hakimian cite the recent case of Giulio Regeni, an Italian PhD student at Cambridge who was found dead in Cairo after having gone missing a few days earlier.
Anderson adds: “There’s always new data to be uncovered. People couldn’t get in and do research for years in Iraq, and it’s still unstable. Many of us are just getting into Iraq for the first time in thirty or forty years, and right now with what’s going on in Syria, it’s hard to get in.”
Trinity has been long-deserving of more ambitious international academic inquiry, and these two new avenues for the pursuit of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies are a testament to that ambition. The expansion also fits neatly into the global element of the College’s 2014–2019 Strategic Plan.
Broadening the horizons of students is a step in the right direction for training students to have a worldly outlook uninhibited by traditional senses and misconceptions of the “other”. Students of European politics and history know well the importance of integration, unity and breeding tolerance in the economic and social policies of our continent. If Trinity is up for the challenge outlined, perhaps programmes in Middle Eastern studies can harness that same potential. Students want to uncover this region in greater detail, and equipping them with the tools to do so through the complex, multifaceted programmes of study that Trinity envisages is crucial.
Correction: 14:55, 25/03/2016
Dr Betty Anderson is an associate professor of history at Boston University, rather than “assistant professor” as stated in a previous version of the article.
