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Scholars receive significant award to back digital humanities, social science projects View the complete news release at: https://www.news.ucsb.edu/2021/020331/big-time-support The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) has awarded UC Santa Barbara scholars Laila Shereen Sakr and Rachael Scarborough King its Digital Extension Grant Awards. The grants support digitally based research projects that advance inclusive scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. Sakr, Read More …

On Tuesday, May 11th, poet and activist Beau Beausoleil joined Assistant Professor of Film and Media Studies Mona Damluji, Middle Eastern Studies librarian Heather Hughes, and Ph.D. candidate Rachel Winter for a conversation about the virtual exhibition Shadow and Light: Honoring Iraqi Academics, hosted by the UCSB Library. Shadow and Light memorializes Iraqi academics assassinated Read More …

Rachel Winter (Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art and Architecture) presented her paper titled, “Exhibiting British Society at the 1976 World of Islam Festival,” at the Getty Graduate Symposium in February 2021. The third annual symposium showcased the work of many promising art history scholars. Rachel also received a Craft Research Fund Project Grant from the Read More …

On Thursday, March 4th, Historian Lale Can gave a talk on her masterful new book Spiritual Subjects which looks at Central Asian pilgrims and the Hajj during the late Ottoman period and the entangled trajectories, negotiations, and contestations that mediated how this group of hajjis interacted with and shaped Ottoman governance. Spiritual Subjects follows these Read More …

Inaugurating the 2020-21 CMES speaker series, Dr. Stacy Farenthold virtually visited UC Santa Barbara in October to discuss her award-winning book Between the Ottomans and Entente: The First World War in the Syrian and Lebanese Diaspora, 1908-1925. The lecture focused on the transnational nodes and micro historical accounts of Syrian migration to the western hemisphere Read More …

UCSB Religious Studies Professor Dwight Reynolds book The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus is now published with Rutledge! Exploring the history of first and second millennia Andalusian music in Islamic Iberia, Reynolds illuminates the incredible fusion of various musical traditions that occurred throughout cultural evolutions during the period. Often neglected in analysis by scholars of Muslim Read More …

Masterson makes a straightforward case for a compassionate response to Syrian refugees. UCSB Political Science Professor Daniel Masterson received significant buzz this past month after publishing articles in both the Washington Post and The Economist. Associated with the Center for Middle East Studies, Masterson studies migration, displacement, and humanitarian policy. An expert on the refugee Read More …

Refugee Regime in the Ottoman Middle East January 14, 2021 Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky’s (Global Studies, UCSB) talk examined the making of the Ottoman refugee regime between the 1860s and World War I. The presentation challenged the conventional wisdom that refugee regimes are the products of the contemporary nation-state order, which go back to the 1951 Read More …

Professor Stuart Smith brings ancient Egyptians and Nubians to Zoom at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center Professor Stuart Tyson Smith’s (Anthropology) research seeks to unravel the historic relationship between ancient Egyptians and Nubians. His latest contribution to the region’s history is presented below in an inaugural W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual Lecture at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center Read More …

UC Santa Barbara has a vibrant graduate student community invested in Middle East focused research. Below are highlights of CMES affiliated graduate students’ scholarship.  Amy Fallas (History) published several reviews: “Researching Modern Egypt Online,” Digital Archives Review, HAZINE; “The Chaldeans: Politics and Identity in Iraq and the American Diaspora,” Book Review, Arab Studies Journal 28, Read More …