Middle East Historiographies: Narrating the Twentieth Century

This collection of ten essays focuses on the way major schools and individuals have narrated histories of the Middle East. The distinguished contributors explore the historiography of economic and intellectual history, nationalism, fundamentalism, colonialism, the media, slavery, and gender. In doing so, they engage with some of the most controversial issues of the twentieth century.

Middle Eastern studies today cover a rich and varied terrain, yet the study of the profession itself has been relatively neglected. There is, however, an ever-present need to examine what the research has chosen to include and exclude and to become more consciously aware of shifts in research approaches and methods. This collection illuminates the evolving state of the art and suggests new directions for further research.

Israel Gershoni and Amy Singer teach modern Middle East history and Ottoman history, respectively, in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History, Tel Aviv University. Y. Hakan Erdem teaches history in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University, Istanbul. Other contributors include Walter Armbrust (St. Antony's College, Oxford) , Marilyn Booth (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Julia Clancy-Smith (University of Arizona, Tucson), Juan R. I. Cole (University of Michigan), Fatma Muge Gocek (University of Michigan), Ellis Goldberg (University of Washington), R. Stephen Humphreys (University of California, Santa Barbara), Eve M. Troutt Powell (University of Pennsylvania), and Charles D. Smith (University of Arizona).

"Middle East Historiographies has some of the best bibliographical essays that I have read. They combine argument, interpretation, and a sense of the development of many fields associated with the study of the modern Middle East. The contributors are among the very best scholars in the U.S. and Israel. The essays offer the reader an opportunity to rethink and reevaluate many central historiographical issues and move the analysis far beyond that stimulated by Edward Said's Orientalism." - Jere Bacharach, University of Washington