波士顿大学

Middle East & North Africa Studies is a major offered by the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies to students enrolled in the College of Arts & Sciences.

The interdisciplinary major in Middle East & North Africa (MENA) Studies provides a coherent grounding in the history, cultures, artistic production, and one or more of the languages of the MENA region. (MENA is defined for this purpose as comprising the Arabic-, Hebrew-, Persian-, and Turkish-speaking areas of the world.) MENA Studies capitalizes on BU’s unusually strong offerings in four Middle Eastern languages (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish) and many aspects of Middle Eastern and North African culture and politics. It is designed to be flexible, easily tailored to each student’s particular interests and learning goals, whether those focus on a certain country in the region or a particular transnational issue. MENA Studies works well on its own, in combination with a minor, or as a double major with International Relations or a disciplinary major.

Graduating MENA Studies majors are well prepared for graduate study and for careers in government, local and international non-governmental organizations, and the private sector. Majors study one or more MENA languages for a total of at least six semesters; they also develop competence in both humanities and social sciences, and the mini-seminar CAS ME 101 helps them integrate these disciplinary approaches and understand the utility and limits of each. Every student builds a “MENA Portfolio” tracking his or her coursework, language learning milestones, study abroad experiences, and reflections. Seniors may present their research projects at an annual majors’ conference. Discussions with MENA faculty and fellow students help majors understand the disciplinary and other biases most prevalent in the region and how they are often replicated among scholars who study it. Majors thus have a continuous opportunity to explore, deepen, and perhaps revise their pre-existing beliefs and ideas about this contested region.

Learning Outcomes

Demonstrate substantive interdisciplinary knowledge of legal, political, economic, social, cultural, and historical factors influencing international affairs.
Display an in-depth understanding of an important functional subfield of the discipline and a major geographical region of the world.
Conduct theoretically informed and empirically based analysis of real-world conditions and events and present the results of that analysis persuasively in written and oral forms.