Fields of Study: Middle East and North Africa

The field of Middle Eastern History is particularly strong at Georgetown. Our Ph.D. program is most known for its emphasis on the social, cultural, and political history of the early modern and modern Middle East. Georgetown has unusually rich offerings on the Arab World - there are five historians on campus and numerous other supporting faculty in other departments with Arab World specialities in language and literature, politics, economics, and anthropology/sociology. The research interests of our faculty in Middle East history include women and gender, legal history, contemporary Islam and Islamic movements, colonial and post-colonial North Africa, Ottoman military and economic history, and Muslim-Christian relations. Geographically we cover the Balkans, Anatolian and Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire, modern Egypt, Syria, Palestine, North Africa, and Sudan.

Faculty:

ABI-MERSHED, Osama W. (PhD, Georgetown, 2003; asst. prof.)
North Africa, Middle East, Colonial Algeria

ÁGOSTON, Gábor (PhD, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 1994; assoc. prof.)
Ottoman Empire, Turkey, early modern military

HADDAD, Yvonne (PhD, Hartford Sem. 1979; prof. and faculty, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding)
Middle East, 20th-century Islamic, social and intellectual

TUCKER, Judith (PhD, Harvard 1981; prof.; editor, International Journal of Middle East Studies)
Middle East and Egypt, women, Ottoman

VOLL, John (PhD, Harvard 1969; prof. and faculty, Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding)
World history; Middle East, modern Islamic, Sudan


For more information, please contact Professor John Voll (faculty representative to the Graduate Studies Committee). Additionally, we encourage you to contact current graduate students for their perspectives on the program; they will also be glad to answer any questions you may have. The following students, listed with their chosen fields and specializations, have agreed to serve as contacts.

Vanesa Casanova-Fernández
Research: Early Modern (17^th-18^th century) Western Mediterranean (Iberian Peninsula / North Africa)
Minor: Latin America
Collateral: Anthropology / Sociology
Other interests: social history, gender history, history of sexuality, frontier and military history, comparative religions, historical ethnography, historiography

Karen Sarkis
Research: Early 20^th Century Lebanon
Minor: Modern Europe
Collateral: Gender Studies

Kahraman Sakul
Middle East with Ottoman orientation
Minor: Russia
Collateral: Central Asia