Modern Middle Eastern & Ancient Near Eastern Studies

[Ptahmose]

I'm a college senior who applied to Egyptology programs this year and got rejected by most of my programs; thankfully I did get into the MA program at Toronto. I was told by several professors that they would have loved to have me but that other applicants in the department had stronger language backgrounds, which set me to thinking.

Why are modern Middle Eastern and ancient Near Eastern studies in the same departments? Applicants to Middle Eastern studies programs have several advantages.

• Their languages are usually readily available, or at least far more so than ancient languages.
• They can more easily study abroad or work in their countries for experience; most Mesopotamian sites are out of bounds even to professional archaeologists, college students are rarely allowed to dig in Egypt, and the only useful type of domestic experience (museum work) is limited to a very few, highly selective places/institutions with good Egyptian/Near Eastern collections.
• Applicants for Middle Eastern studies can and do also apply to a wide range of programs in history, political science, international relations, and the like. Egyptologists/Assyriologists don't have such a luxury.

With the notable exceptions of Brown and Johns Hopkins, applicants for the ancient tracks of Near Eastern departments are always in the same pool as applicants with several years of Arabic/Hebrew/etc., study abroad experience in Lebanon/Israel/Syria/etc., and so on, which seems unequal. It's also highly unfortunate, I think, that many departments alternate in admitting ancient and modern students each year due to funding constraints, which makes the already depressingly small number of departments available to ancient applicants (8 or so) even smaller.

Thoughts?

[Bukharan]

It's also highly unfortunate, I think, that many departments alternate in admitting ancient and modern students each year due to funding constraints, which makes the already depressingly small number of departments available to ancient applicants (8 or so) even smaller.

To be honest, I have never heard of this. Are you sure?

But, yes, I totally feel your pain. It never made sense to me why those departments are often held together. For many applicants, those fields will not be 'adjacent' interests. Many modernists would often rather take a class in ME politics, European history, anthropology etc. than in Near Eastern Studies. I suspect vice versa works as well.

[Sparky]

(Background: As an undergrad, I strongly considered studying ancient Mesopotamia on the grad level, and had even started to nose around possible programs)

My understanding is that when ancient and modern try to coexist, it's not that people in the different eras compete. More like, the department has Egyptology, Sumerology, and Assyriology--but only has one slot per year for ancient. It is, from what I've heard, fairly common for a university to rotate by year which subfield within ancient they're looking for a person. But it's not all that uncommon for a school to break their rule and take, say, an Egyptologist two years running.

As for why modern and ancient are together--it probably has more to do with ancient not being a sufficient size to form its own department. If it were up to me, I'd put ANE studies in the "classics" department, but I'm not sure academia/Western culture's Eurocentrism has faded enough to realize that Greece and Rome are not the end-all be-all of "classics."

[Bukharan]

If it were up to me, I'd put ANE studies in the "classics" department.

I don't want to generalise but I think this is the case in many British universities. Then again, few of them have their own issues with Modern MES - like dumping it into a big 'Oriental' Dept alongside Chinese and Japanese Studies.

[Ptahmose]

Sparky, thanks for clarifying. That makes sense.

[samarkand]

From what I know, Near Eastern Studies is dedicated in general to an analysis and examination of literary and civilizational history. It doesn't denote anything modern, except if you speak of the study of certain languages. Some universities of course group Middle Eastern Studies with Near Eastern Studies, but this is a misguided attempt to consolidate certain fields based on their geographic location (in other words, anything east of Europe belongs to the near or middle east). It makes sense that Egyptology, Assyriology and the like are grouped with Islamic Studies, Jewish Studies, etc in departments of NES because these fields have historically been dedicated to an analysis of that which is long gone, while Middle Eastern Studies delves into modern political, economic, historic, religious contexts and circumstances. You are right that MES applicants have a wide range of disciplines to apply to, but this is certainly not the case for NES applicants interested in medieval, classical, post-classical Islam, Judaism, or literary studies (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, etc). We shouldn't think of NES as composed of competing factions - yes there are political divisions between professors in many departments across the nation, but this doesn't mean that the discipline itself is a divisive one. Its disparate components in my opinion form a good cohesive whole dedicated to that which is antiquated. Just because modern scholars utilize resources in NES doesn't make it a modern department.