World War I in the Middle East

FAIN: FS-50281-11

American University (Washington, DC 20016-8200)
Mustafa Aksakal (Project Director: March 2011 to September 2013)
Elizabeth Florence Thompson (Co Project Director: August 2011 to September 2013)

A four-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty members to explore World War I in the Middle East.

With the approach of the war’s centennial in 2014, we propose this seminar to launch “World War I in the Middle East” as a distinct subfield of historical study. We aim to consolidate the growing, but fragmented body of existing research, inspire new avenues of inquiry, and begin a holistic reassessment of the war, based upon a fuller appreciation of the role played by the Middle East. We will do so by uniting scholars from disparate subfields and by building a website to perpetuate contact among them. Our seminar takes a holistic view of the war. It ties together operational history with the state’s political program of national mobilization and social developments across a region stretching from the Balkans to Libya, the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf. We emphasize the interconnection of these different levels of history in our exploration of the totality of the war.