Global Middle Eastern and North African Studies (MENA)

Welcome to Global Middle Eastern and North Africa Studies (MENA) at Wesleyan University. Developments in the Middle East and North Africa over the course of the past decades have broadly and profoundly affected the world in which we live, and emerge from the long histories of social connection, political economic exchange, and religious, cultural, and linguistic diversity across these regions. They have revealed stark gaps in our understanding of the region’s economies, cultures, governments, religions, histories, and languages, on both an individual and collective basis.

Established in 2010 as Middle Eastern Studies, in 2025 the program expanded to become Global Middle Eastern and North African Studies, attending to the important connections between North Africa and the Middle East as well as the global reach of the regions’ peoples, cultures, histories, and languages. The minor is an interdisciplinary curriculum that expands and builds upon Wesleyan’s course offerings touching upon these regions. The minor takes a broad and inclusive course of study and touches upon areas across Southwest and Central Asia and North Africa, as represented by our faculty's areas of expertise, from the Maghreb to Mashreq and beyond. In doing so, it encourages an expansive study of these regions, their local and global histories, and the study of a wide variety of peoples, cultures, religions, and other discursive traditions that shape their presents.

Although individual courses are open to any major (departmental prerequisites may apply), the minor offers students interested in a concentration on the Middle East and North Africa, as well as its global diasporas, through a formal curriculum that integrates anthropology, art history, cultural studies, ethnomusicology. studies of film and visual culture, government, history, philosophy, religious studies, and either Arabic or Hebrew, with an option to petition to study another regional language. This website contains details and contact information for the minor program, and also serves as a resource for current MENA course offerings, related events, and links pertaining to regional news and scholarship.