Program Overview

Introduction to the Graduate Certificate in Middle East Studies

The Duke University Middle East Studies Center (DUMESC) coordinates the Duke-UNC Graduate Certificate in Middle East Studies, a joint offering of the Consortium in Middle East Studies administered through the Department of Asian and Middle East Studies at Duke and the Department of Religious Studies at UNC.

Program Description

The Graduate Certificate in Middle East Studies trains students for interdisciplinary research in Middle East Studies and is designed to complement the disciplinary training in their home departments. The Certificate is open to students in any graduate department, program, or professional school at Duke University and UNC-CH who are engaged with the study of the Middle East.

Program Objectives

The objectives of the Graduate Certificate are to:

• Offer a coherent set of courses that introduce Middle East Studies as an interdisciplinary field to MA students, professional students, and Ph.D. students
• Link course work to research, doctoral exams, and thesis or dissertation writing, with an emphasis on the challenges of blending disciplinary and interdisciplinary training
• Provide training for classroom instruction in Middle East Studies through course work, faculty mentoring, and opportunities for teaching

Program Requirements

To receive a Graduate Certificate in Middle East Studies, students must:

• Complete four courses, including a required Certificate Core Course, "Critical Genealogies of Middle East Studies"
• Participate in a bi-weekly workshop organized each spring by the Consortium for Middle East Studies
• Submit a writing sample (thesis, dissertation chapter, or a major seminar research paper) on a topic related to Middle East studies
• Demonstrate relevant language skills, or international experience or training
  • In addition to the Certificate Core Course, students must take three other graduate courses on a topic related to the Middle East
  • One of these three courses must be outside the student's home department or school
  • One may be an advanced Middle East language course (third-year or above in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, or Urdu)

About the Duke University Middle East Studies Center

The Duke University Middle East Studies Center is a hub for research, education, and outreach about the Middle East that serves as a world forum at the local, national, and international levels. The Center prepares tomorrow's leaders by equipping them with knowledge about Middle Eastern languages, cultures, and societies. The Center is distinguished by its transregional approach, which treats the Middle East as a unit extending from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and emphasizes interdisciplinarity, comparativity, and connectivity. The Graduate Certificate is designed to complement the disciplinary training students receive in their home departments and to formally recognize a focus on the Middle East within their graduate programs of study and research.