The records of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies document the founding and functioning of the center, from the 1960s to the 1990s, and include historical materials about the Department of Near Eastern Studies dating from the 1940s and 1950s. The records cover the center's history fairly evenly, but document the period from the 1970s to the 1990s in greater depth than the center's first decade. While the 1960s are documented in correspondence, funding reports, and press clippings, records from the later decade also include executive committee minutes, material from conferences and lectures, and photographs. The CMENAS records cover a variety of topics related to the history, politics, economy, literature and art of the Middle East. Furthermore, the records document how American universities studied those topics from the 1940s to the 1990s.
The records are arranged in twelve series: Area Centers Material, Executive Committee, Evaluation, Funding, Historical Material, Intra-University Programs, Name File, National Organizations, Outreach, Publications Related Files, Special Activities, and Photographs.
The Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies (CMENAS) was created by the University of Michigan in 1961. It was originally called the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies, which was changed to the Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies in 1963, and was changed once again in 1991 to its current name. The Center was one of many "area centers" established at American universities in the post-World War II era. Following the war, American foreign policy makers argued that a lack of American expertise in foreign language and culture had hindered the U.S. war effort, and that this deficiency would continue to weaken the nation's global position. Area centers were intended to remedy this weakness by encouraging intense interdisciplinary scholarship with a strong focus on the mastery of language. In 1947, the University of Michigan established its first area studies center, the Center for Japanese Studies.
The Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies was the product of an expansion of area studies at the university proposed by the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LS&A) in 1959. LS&A appointed a committee chaired by anthropology professor William Schorger to develop the proposal. The committee recommended the creation of four new centers: the Center for Chinese Studies, the Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies, the Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, and the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies. In 1961, the university secured a large grant from the Ford Foundation to carry out the proposal, and launched the new centers. Schorger was appointed director of the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies.
The new center drew upon the faculty of a variety of academic departments. Professors from the extant Department of Near Eastern Studies, who were mostly language experts, provided the core of the center's faculty; they were joined by faculty from history, anthropology, economics, the history of art, and other disciplines whose work concerned the Middle East or North Africa.
The center's main objectives are to coordinate research on the Middle East and North Africa and to train experts on those regions. In its first decade, the center primarily fulfilled these goals by funding faculty instruction and research, providing fellowships to students, and supporting library acquisitions. In the 1970s and 1980s, the center expanded its activities by hosting academic conferences, sponsoring lectures, and developing workshops on the Middle East for secondary school instructors. In the 1990s, the Center has continued its varied activities, supported by federal grants under the Title VI National Resource Center and Foreign Language Fellowships Program.
Directors of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies
| Date |
Event |
| 1970 | William Schorger |
| 1971-1974 | Kenneth A. Luger |
| 1974-1980 | William Schorger |
| 1980-1982 | Ernest T. Abdel-Misseh |
| 1982-1983 | James Stewart-Solomon (Acting) |
| 1983-1992 | Ernest N. McCarus |
| 1992-1995 | Juan Cole |
| 1994 | Robin Barlow (Acting) |
| 1995-1997 | Robin Barlow |
| 1997-2003 | Michael Bonner |
| 2004-2006 | Marcia Inhorn |
| 2007-2012 | Gottfried Hagen |
| 2012-2017 | Juan Cole |
| 2017- | Samer Mahdy Ali |
Name Changes
| Date |
Event |
| 1961-1963 | Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies |
| 1963-1993 | Center for Near Eastern and North African Studies |
| 1993- | Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies |
