About

 Welcome to the Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA) at UC Santa Cruz.

Established in 2019, the Center for the Middle East and North Africa (CMENA) is dedicated to the project of creating community and promoting education and research about the histories, politics, and cultures of the peoples who live in the Middle East and North Africa.  Our programming and activities are guided by a set of core values.

Distinction. The scholarly community that comprises the Center for the Middle East and North Africa is distinct in its excellence. Its faculty are innovative and active scholars and have authored an impressive array of publications. Their research interests and those of the graduate students associated with CMENA include explorations of politics, economics, race, law, the environment, film, literature, linguistics, archeology, the digital humanities, and the histories of science and medicine. The center possesses a unique strength in the regions that comprise North Africa. Among their awards and honors, CMENA’s faculty have been awarded the National Jewish Book Award, the Mellon Sawyer seminar, the Archaeological Institute of America’s Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award, the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, the University of California President’s Faculty Research Fellowship, the Hellman Fellowship, the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Fellowship, and have been selected to be members of the Institute for Advanced Study and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Opportunity. CMENA is devoted to creating opportunities for students regardless of their financial means. These include travel and study in the region, access to a substantial and diverse curriculum, language study, and the forging of relationships with prominent scholars and professionals. We are proud to belong to a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI), which ranks among the top institutions for social mobility and supports first-generation college students through the First Generation Initiative. CMENA strives to open the world to students who are interested in learning, engagement, and positioning themselves as global citizens.

Community. The Center for the Middle East and North Africa is a unique resource for the communities of the Silicon Valley, California’s Central Coast, and the Bay Area, and for students, faculty, and staff at UC Santa Cruz. Our mission includes bringing these different communities into conversation with one another and with scholars, activists, journalists, artists, and those involved in the politics of the region. On campus, CMENA works closely with departments in the Humanities, Social Sciences, and Arts Divisions, and with other academic centers that include the Center for Jewish Studies, the Center for Cultural Studies, and the Center for South Asian Studies. We strive to demonstrate the centrality of the Middle East and North Africa within global history, and the region’s significance in the political, cultural, intellectual movements that shape our world.

The Center for the Middle East and North Africa is a project of The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, a hub for academic research, cross-discipline collaboration, and public engagement.  The Humanities Institute incubates ideas and fosters innovation by funding projects, centers, and research clusters that enable faculty and students to work on some of the biggest problems of our day.
For questions related to the programs or activities of CMENA, please contact Director Muriam Haleh Davis at muhdavis@ucsc.edu.
Director: Muriam Haleh Davis (Associate Professor, History)
Faculty  
Lily Pearl Balloffet (Associate Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies)
Banu Bargu (Professor, History of Consciousness)
Dorian Bell (Associate Professor, Literature)
Abdelkader Berrahmoun (Lecturer, Languages and Applied Linguistics)
Edmund Burke, III (Professor Emeritus, History; Founding Director, Center for World History)
Yasmeen Daifallah (Assistant Professor, Politics)
T.J. Demos (Professor, and Patricia and Rowland Rebele Endowed Chair in Art History, History of Art and Visual Culture; Director, Center for Creative Ecologies)
Jennifer L. Derr (Associate Professor, History; Founding Director of CMENA, 2019-2024)
Nathaniel Deutsch (Professor, History; Director of the Center for Jewish Studies; Professor and Baumgarten Endowed Chair in Jewish Studies)
Martin Devecka (Associate Professor, Literature; Director, Classical Studies)
Bryan Donaldson (Professor, Languages and Applied Linguistics)
Mehran Esfandiari (Lecturer, Languages and Applied Linguistics)
Maria Evangelatou, (Professor, History of Art and Visual Culture)
Camilo Gómez-Rivas (Associate Professor, Literature)
Brent Haddad (Professor, Environmental Studies)
Ashwak Hauter (Assistant Professor, Anthropology)
Alma Rachel Heckman (Associate Professor, History; Neufeld-Levin Chair of Holocaust Studies)
Jennifer Lynn Kelly (Associate Professor, Feminist Studies; Critical Race and Ethnic Studies)
Sharon Kinoshita (Professor, Literature; Co-director, Center for Mediterranean Studies)
Anne Kreps (Associate Professor, History)
Peter Limbrick (Professor, Film and Digital Media)
Jennifer Mogannam (Assistant Professor, Critical Race and Ethnic Studies)
Nidhi Mahajan (Assistant Professor, Anthropology)
Mark Fathi Massoud (Professor and Director of Legal Studies, Politics)
Magy Seif El-Nasr (Professor, Computational Media)
Thomas Serres (Assistant Professor, Politics)
Elaine Sullivan (Associate Professor, History)
Graduate Students
Azad Azizyan (Film and Digital Media)
Mohamadreza Babaee (Digital Arts New Media)
Yasmine Benabdallah (Film and Digital Media)
Sarah Cheikhali (Politics)
Xafsa Ciise (History of Consciousness)
Jack William Davies (History of Consciousness)
Robin C. Gabriel (Sociology)
Rebecca Gross (Literature)
Suzy Halajian (Film and Digital Media)
Cameron Hughes (Sociology)
Halima Kazem (Feminist Studies)
Sintia Issa (History of Art and Visual Culture)
Robin Jones (History of Consciousness)
Emre Keser (History of Consciousness)
Maureen McGuire (History of Art and Visual Culture)
Mahshid Modares (Film and Digital Media)
Jenica Moore (Politics)
Esra Özban (Film and Digital Media)
Ariella Patchen (History of Consciousness)
Huzaifa Shahbaz (Politics)
Lior Shamriz (Film and Digital Media)
Shirin Towfiq (Film and Digital Media)