Middle East Studies is an interdisciplinary field within the humanities and social sciences that has gained increasing prominence in recent decades. Emerging primarily in the West in the 20th century, the field takes as its object of study the so-called “MENA” (Middle East North Africa) region, which stretches from Mauritania in the west to Afghanistan in the east, encompassing North Africa, the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, and Iran. The field is not merely concerned with gathering historical, cultural, linguistic, or political facts about a particular region; rather, it is an intellectual project aimed at understanding how knowledge about the region has been produced, the historical and political conditions under which this knowledge has spread, and the consequences it has had for the world we live in. In this sense, Middle East studies, as a field, interrogates the very frameworks through which the “Middle East” has been imagined, represented, studied, and governed.
The origins of this field are deeply intertwined with colonial history, particularly through the legacy of Orientalism. As Edward Said famously argued in his Orientalism (1978), much of the Western scholarship on the Middle East was shaped by imperialist worldviews. Said showed that these texts did not neutrally reflect Middle Eastern realities but instead constructed the region as backward, exotic, and inferior—an ideological “Other” that served to define and reinforce Western superiority. Orientalism, in Said’s terms, functioned as a form of knowledge that helped justify colonial domination under the guise of objective scholarship.
Contemporary Middle East studies emerged out of, but also in response to, this legacy. Over time, the field began to question not only earlier representations of the region but also the deeper structures that shaped the production of those representations. Scholars in the field questioned who speaks for the region, under what authority, and for what audience. These questions led to a growing awareness of how academic institutions, state interests, and funding sources had historically influenced the narratives and priorities of research about the Middle East.
Middle East studies is also closely connected to broader conversations in postcolonial theory, critical race studies, and global media analysis. It aims to describe the region in its diversity and to explore how it is shaped by, and responds to, transnational forces such as war, migration, capitalism, and digital technologies. In doing so, the field connects regional specificity to global structures of power. However, the field today is not only about critiquing Orientalism or the politics of knowledge production. It has expanded to center the lived experiences of people in the region—their cultures, everyday struggles, and forms of resistance. The study of urban life, popular culture, gender, class, and migration has revealed new layers of complexity in how people live, adapt, and assert agency within and beyond the region.
Middle East studies is not about speaking for others but about enabling more equitable and critical forms of dialogue between cultures and knowledge traditions. It invites students and scholars to engage, listen, and approach research as a collaborative rather than extractive process. As a field, it remains dynamic and open-ended. Its definition shifts depending on the questions being asked