Middle East and North African Studies (MENA)
Degree Type: Certificate
The PhD certificate in Middle East and North African Studies (MENA) offer rigorous, interdisciplinary approaches to the study and understanding of the world region stretching roughly from Morocco in the West to Iran and Central Asia in the East, the Mediterranean in the North and into Saharan Africa and the Sudan in the South. Faculty members also have interests in the sizeable Arab and Muslim diaspora populations in Europe and the United States.
The faculty is drawn from the disciplines of anthropology, art history, art theory and practice, history, literature, political science, religion, and performance studies, among others, and is comprised of scholars who study and write about this region from a variety of perspectives, with a particular focus on the 20th and 21st centuries. The MENA faculty draws both on Northwestern’s recognized strengths in diaspora studies and Islam in trans-Saharan Africa and its emergent ones in media studies and North African studies. Faculty frequently take comparative approaches (both cross-regional and cross-disciplinary) to the area.
As much as it organizes itself around a region, however, the Program takes a new approach to the Area Studies model itself and encourages fresh perspectives on the established tradition of Middle East studies. The certificate curricula keep in continued and productive tension the idea that MENA is a coherent world region as well as the history and politics of the area studies designation. The MENA Program leads students in an inquiry into the cultural, political, and economic conditions of globalization, including media, migration, digital cultures, cultural production, law, and religion/secularism, as they inflect the region and its relationships both internally and externally.
While the MENA certificate focus on a relatively coherent world region, and graduate students must attain fluency in the languages, histories, literatures and sociocultural specificity of the region, its faculty also recognize that world regions are inherently porous and marked by patterns of migration and cultural exchange. This is particularly true in the MENA region.
Also, because MENA is an interdisciplinary program, students will all be simultaneously engaged in developing the protocols, methodologies, and scholarly traditions in their home disciplines and become familiar with those of others.
Additional resources:
Middle East and North African Studies (MENA) Courses
MENA 410-0 Pro-Seminar in Middle East and North African Studies (1 Unit)
Introduces students to key scholarly literature in the field, drawn from a variety of disciplines.
MENA 411-0 Approaches and Perspectives in MENA Studies (1 Unit)
Surveys differing disciplinary approaches to the study of the Middle East and North Africa, often organized around a theme.
MENA 412-1 MENA Graduate Colloquium (0 Unit)
The MENA Colloquium is designed to encourage dialogue between professors and students who share interests in Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. Each student will precirculate a paper of 15-20 pages a week before his or her session. At the meeting, the student will speak for 20-25 minutes followed by a formal response (about 10 minutes) from a member of Northwestern's MENA faculty. Substantial time will be devoted to questions and discussion.
MENA 412-2 MENA Graduate Colloquium (0 Unit)
The MENA Colloquium is designed to encourage dialogue between professors and students who share interests in Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. Each student will precirculate a paper of 15-20 pages a week before his or her session. At the meeting, the student will speak for 20-25 minutes followed by a formal response (about 10 minutes) from a member of Northwestern's MENA faculty. Substantial time will be devoted to questions and discussion.
MENA 412-3 MENA Graduate Colloquium (1 Unit)
The MENA Colloquium is designed to encourage dialogue between professors and students who share interests in Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. Each student will precirculate a paper of 15-20 pages a week before his or her session. At the meeting, the student will speak for 20-25 minutes followed by a formal response (about 10 minutes) from a member of Northwestern's MENA faculty. Substantial time will be devoted to questions and discussion.
MENA 415-0 MENA Graduate Colloquium Advanced (0 Unit)
The MENA Colloquium is designed to encourage dialogue between professors and students who share interests in Middle East and North African Studies at Northwestern University. Each student will precirculate a paper of 15-20 pages a week before his or her session. At the meeting, the student will speak for 20-25 minutes followed by a formal response (about 10 minutes) from a member of Northwestern's MENA faculty. Substantial time will be devoted to questions and discussion.
MENA 490-0 Special Topics in MENA (1 Unit)
Topic Varies by instructor. May be repeated for credit with change in topic.