The Middle East in World History: Global Connections and Comparisons

Few of the world’s regions are as closely tied to the broader currents of global history as the Middle East. In spite of this, the turn towards area studies in the 1960s has ensured the predominance of a highly specialised approach to Middle Eastern history which views the region as distinct and largely separate from the world that surrounds it. Recently this has begun to change as a broadening array of scholars step outside the area studies paradigm, focusing instead on the historical intersections between the Middle East and the wider world. They have studied the circuits of economic and cultural exchange, the cross‐fertilisation of political and religious ideas, and the great movements of people that have long blurred the boundaries between the Middle East and the ‘outside world’. This conference brings together scholars of this nature in an organised setting for the first time. It aims to provide a forum in which the methodologies of world historians can be system
atically applied and debated in the context of the Middle East, ultimately challenging the ways in which we think about and define the region.

Themes:

• Migration and travel    
• Religious connections    
• Empire and colonialism
• Trade    
• Intellectual and cultural exchange     
• Diplomacy and political networks

Information:
http://www.cmehg.org