What are some of the best Middle Eastern History Master's programs?

[YoungQ]

I cannot find any information online regarding what universities are the best for Middle Eastern History Master's degrees. I can find lots of information online regarding where is best to study for Middle Eastern Studies Master's degrees, Middle Eastern History PhDs, and Western History Master's degrees, but nothing specifically about Middle Eastern History Master's degrees.

 

What would you say some of the best places are? I want to eventually do a PhD in Middle Eastern History (not Middle Eastern Studies like many people studying the Middle East these days), but I unfortunately am not fluent in millions of languages, so I am thinking that doing a Master's degree first will help make me look more competitive for the PhD later on.

 

Any thoughts? Thanks for your help!

[boomah]

I'd suggest going for an MA in Middle Eastern studies, and focusing on Middle Eastern history during your time there. Most schools that offer standalone MAs in history aren't very strong in the Middle East. And there are plenty of students who first go for an MA in Middle Eastern studies and then move on to excellent programs in History, since many schools offering Mid East studies are very strong in Middle Eastern history.

Here are some of the top places for an MA in Middle Eastern studies: Harvard, Chicago, UT-Austin, Georgetown, NYU...

[YoungQ]

Hi boomah - thanks for your thoughts. I am very well aware of which places are great for the MA in Middle Eastern Studies, but I'm not a big fan of interdisciplinary subjects. I like traditional history and want to be a Historian, not study things like Political Science, Arab Studies, or Jewish Studies.

[TMP]

You'll probably want to actually look at the curriculum requirements for the MA.  There will be a couple of core courses but a lot of leeway for electives.  You might be able to take a general historiography course in the History Department as one of your electives.  It's really not a bad thing to do an interdisciplinary MA as it exposes you to other methodologies that will actually be useful for historical research.  The history discipline tends to get caught between humanities and social sciences because of historians can use a huge range of methodologies to carry out research.  I took several literature and language classes in addition to history classes for my MA and they have proven to be useful on the long run.

[YoungQ]

TMP - perhaps you are right, but I feel like I already have a strong background in other disciplines (2 of my 4 undergraduate majors are interdisciplinary).

 

However, the advantage of an interdisciplinary MA would be that I can catch up on my language skills while also studying History, and that is my goal after all...

[kotov]

On 12/22/2015 at 10:44 AM, YoungQ said:

but I'm not a big fan of interdisciplinary subjects. I like traditional history and want to be a Historian, not study things like Political Science, Arab Studies, or Jewish Studies.

Good luck with that. You won't be doing yourself any favors by being rigid and inflexible. You have to be willing to look at scholarship written by non-historians in addition to the historians of your period/geographic area if you want to be able to do graduate level work in your field. The attitude you're displaying about this and in other threads, if I may be quite frank, does not bode well for your potential as a graduate student. If you come into a program with the idea that you know more than other people just because they may be journalists or sociologists, and you are unwilling to abandon your preconceived ideas on the subjects you're studying, you're not going to be successful. I realize this isn't very nice or politic, but better that you hear it now than find out the hard way.

And yes, if you don't have the language skills in Arabic or Hebrew, you're going to need to bust it on those during your M.A. At least for Arabic, I would suggest that you might want to look into Indiana University's Summer Workshop in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian languages. Despite the name, they teach first through third year Arabic, as well as first and second year Kurdish and Turkish, should you decide to move in those directions. It's not too difficult to get funding to study languages there, especially if you're doing graduate work in a field that requires use of one of those languages. I didn't pay anything out of pocket (including room and board) for the summer I spent there studying Romanian, thanks to Title VIII. You can also apply for funding through FLAS, I believe, and your funding from one summer can often be extended to a second. Obviously, it would be ideal if you could do your language work at your home university, but if you wanted to supplement your language study during the summer, SWSEEL is a really great option. Here's the link: http://www.indiana.edu/~swseel/languages/

[YoungQ]

kotov - just because you do not like my discipline or my opinions does not mean I am too inflexible or uneducated. Again, two of my four undergraduate majors are interdisciplinary and I am familiar with other disciplines. However, at the end of the day, different disciplines exist for different reasons. If everyone thought all disciplines were equal there would not be different disciplines (and there is a sect of scholars out there that hate that there are various disciplines, but they are a fringe group that few take seriously). I have never said that I will never review the scholarship of other disciplines, but that does not mean I will weigh it with the same value or praise it as if the other discipline's standards as are good as History's (perhaps you are not familiar with the Sokal Affair? have you not read Kramer's Ivory Towers on Sand? - for example). Every non-interdisciplinary scholar I have spoken with agrees with my opinion on that. With all due respect, I would argue that you are in the minority, not me. You seem to forget that the entire fields of Middle Eastern History and Middle Eastern Studies have been dealing with these questions very difficulty over the last few decades and there is not a consensus on this matter, just like there is not a consensus on many, many, many things in Middle East scholarship (such as Bernard Lewis vs. Edward Said, whether the Armenian Genocide was a genocide, who is indigenous to Modern Israel, and so on). So, I will of course read publications like the Journal of the Middle East & Africa and see what non-Historians have to say about the Middle East, but if you are going to insist that I abandon the discipline of History because criticizing other scholars "offends" them, then you are going too far and arguably against the Western academic tradition.

 

As for language training, I appreciate your recommendation. I have being doing summers with Middlebury College and find that they teach foreign languages better than any other university I have ever studied at. I would also recommend them to everyone else out there who needs to improve their language skills.

Edited December 25, 2015 by YoungQ

[ExponentialDecay]

Hi YoungQ,

I'm very ignorant when it comes to history (History?) - in fact, I've never even taken a history class. However, my impression of it as a mathematically trained shitlord was, seeing as it contains neither mathematical or otherwise formal models nor can its alleged findings be replicated, that it upheld roughly the same standard of evidence as, say, literary studies or anthropology. Basically, my question is, what makes history superior to the other humanities?

[dr. t]

I'm not young enough to know everything. - J. M. Barrie

[ashiepoo72]

It's not superior...it's a different way of studying the same or similar phenomena. The humanistic social science disciplines are sisters. They're not the same, in fact many are quite different, but they're related and can speak to one another if they're willing to listen. And they should, especially history, which prizes a multiplicity of perspectives in order to paint a fuller portrait of events.

[heliogabalus]

With 4 undergraduate majors, why aren't you applying to PhD programs?

[kotov]

Well, if you think you know better than those who are employed in and publishing in the field, then more power to you. 

[JKL]

Check out Arkansas.

http://cavern.uark.edu/rd_arsc/mest/4749.php