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Advanced Certificate in Eastern Mediterranean Studies

Program level: 
Advanced Certificate
Degree awarded: 
non-degree certificate
Unit: 
Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies
Program URL: 
Advanced Certificate in Eastern Mediterranean Studies
Country of accreditation: 
United States
Program accreditation/registration: 
Program approved and registered by the New York State Education Department
Standard Program duration: 
Other
Type of degree: 
CEU
Director: 
Brett Wilson
Program administrator: 
Eda Guclu-Menze

CEU application details

Course Listing

Program Description

The Advanced Certificate in Eastern Mediterranean Studies (EMS) is run by the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and is open to MA students from the Departments of History and Medieval Studies.

The focus of enquiry is on the continuing as well as competing tradition(s) connecting the Roman empire and its successive heirs and/or rivals, the Byzantine, Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, and Ottoman empires, exploring their influences on the post-Ottoman present.

The Advanced Certificate in EMS consciously breaks with current standard periodization, using a diachronic approach, from late antiquity to the modern age, to focus on the crossroads of the cultures, subsequently rich in their intellectual, social, institutional and cultural heritage. It also encourages a synchronic approach, both comparative and connected, to enquire into the imperial polities that lay claim to the Roman inheritance or indeed rivaled it.

Students are offered a unique opportunity to explore how various and successive traditions were appropriated by and adjusted to the realities of medieval, early modern and modern polities in the Eastern Mediterranean and beyond.

The Advanced Certificate puts emphasis on transnational/trans-imperial history and actively engages in the ongoing debate on the relationship between macro and micro historical studies. It encourages reflection on how various coterminous, successive or otherwise connected imperial formations and cultures in the Eastern Mediterranean and adjacent areas interacted, influenced one another or competed with each other at a macro level.

The course builds on the already existing CEU faculty research and expertise, consolidates the innovative curriculum developed in the last five years, and brings the departments of History and Medieval Studies even closer together while simultaneously opening up current historiographic, thematic and historical issues to students and faculty from other departments.

The program is offered with 12 credits for students in one-year MA programs and 16 credits for students in two-year MA programs.