Middle East Studies Center Public Programs Fund

With war and strife spreading out from the impacts of Gaza and Iran, it is timely to showcase, educate, and celebrate the rich cultural heritage and practices of a vibrant Middle East. The Middle East Studies Center is the hub for all things Middle East at Ohio State University. By “Middle East,” we mean the countries and regions of Southwest Asia, North Africa, and Türkiye (Turkey). Even as our faculty, students and next generation are not able to experience the Middle East in person, we seek to augment and uplift the cultural encounters and heritage experiences for students and all Buckeyes.

We are raising $20,000 to bring in expert artists, academics doing fieldwork in the region, authors from the region, and others who will create experiences that bring the cultural context of the Middle East to a wide audience. We will be able to offer intercultural learning opportunities through the arts such as concerts, performances, movie screenings, hands-on workshops with Chefs and Master Calligraphers, staged readings, and the like. 

Community members, help us amplify the rich artistic heritage and cultural practices of the Middle East. Your contribution will make it possible for our students and members of the local community to engage personally with special guests and to learn from our faculty about related histories, cultures, and places in the Middle East. 

In the past we have commissioned plays, co-hosted international conferences, facilitated discussions with film makers, organized conversations with hip hop artists, co-sponsored Arabic calligraphy workshops.  Your funds will allow us to bring in prominent artists and experts and let them use their creative freedom to engage at the human level of the arts. 

Goals: Increasing Visibility and Relevance

Our Center brings together scholars from across the university to support public programs, language learning opportunities, and community conversations that highlight both everyday life and major events in the Middle East. We want to make these opportunities more visible to the local community by hosting prominent artists and scholars who will draw a crowd.

We have an educational mission to make learning about the Middle East more accessible to our local community and that prioritizes youth. Visible activities build excitement and help us to form communities around topics of interest. Our goal is to serve these communities with more of the opportunities and resources they are seeking, and to fill those events so that we have the resources to sustain the activities.

Images

The main image is from "House of Flesh," a play the Middle East Studies Center produced in collaboration with members of the Department of Theatre in 2011. You will also see Master Calligrapher, Muhammad Habib's, Calligraphy on a chalkboard he created for the Calligraphy Workshop we co-host with Near Eastern and Saouth Asian Languages and Cultures (NESA), with support from the Center for Languages Literatures and Cultures. The picture of our team was taken at the Clintonville Farmers Market, showing our community outreach and education. We also included recent podcast episodes about Medieval Islamic Agriculture with Professor Rattan Lal, and the field of Persian Archeology with Kyle Olsen. You'll find much more on our website: mesc.osu.edu