Middle East/South Asia Studies allows students, faculty, and staff to facilitate interdisciplinary teaching, learning, and research on the interconnected regions of South Asia, West and Central Asia, and North Africa. This area encompasses many countries with related cultures including Afghanistan, Algeria, Armenia, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Faculty investigate these cultures and societies, teach undergraduates, and teach and advise graduate students in the disciplines of anthropology, art history, art studio, Asian American Studies, cinema, classics, comparative literature, English, gender studies, history, music, political science, religious studies, and sociology. ME/SA faculty research has been supported by funding from the UC Chancellor’s Fellowship, the Davis Humanities Institute, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Research Center in Egypt, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council for Learned Societies, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, and the Fulbright Program. Core and affiliated faculty conduct research in over a dozen languages of these regions, and students can study two or more years of Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi/Urdu, Persian, or Punjabi in ME/SA.

Students can learn about this diverse and dynamic region through the ME/SA major or the minors in ME/SA Studies, South Asian Studies, Arab Studies, Iran and Persian Studies, or Arabic language.