MESAAS
| Location | New York City, New York |
|---|---|
| Website | www |
The Columbia University Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies (also known as "MESAAS") is a leading center for the study of the politics, history, culture, societies and languages of the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa. With more than forty faculty members, core and adjunct, MESAAS houses a large number of world-renowned scholars, some of whom have had important contributions as public intellectuals in addition to their scholarly productions.
Columbia University, founded as King’s College in 1754 under a charter from the British crown, appointed its first Professor of Oriental Languages in 1784. In the later nineteenth-century the study of Hebrew, Sanskrit, and other Oriental languages became part of the graduate program. By 1890, Oriental Languages became one of the six departments in the Faculty of Philosophy. In 1891 a chair of Indo-Iranian Languages was established. A. V. Williams Jackson, a Columbia Ph.D., was appointed to the chair in 1895. "The scholars of Indo-Iranian philology subsequently broke away to join the anthropologist Franz Boas in the new Department of General and Comparative Linguistics. Oriental Languages, under the leadership of Richard Gottheil, narrowed its name to the Department of Semitic Languages. Gottheil trained several scholars who went on to organize and lead other departments, including William Popper (later chair of the Department of Near East Languages at Berkeley) and Philip Hitti (founder of the Near Eastern Studies program at Princeton)." In the mid 1960s the department expanded to include scholars from the departments of history and international affairs. "Reflecting the expansion into modern history and politics, the name was revised once more, in 1965, from Near and Middle East Languages, to Middle East Languages and Cultures, or MELAC." In 1992 the name of the department was changed to Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. "Using the term Asian rather than South Asian made the name scarcely more accurate, but ensured that the department’s new acronym, MEALAC, sounded the same as its previous one."
"In 2005, the Department began the most rapid expansion in its history, recruiting a number of faculty in South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and in 2007 it extended its geographical and intellectual scope to include African studies. After doubling in size over the previous decade, the department had outgrown its home in Kent Hall and in 2009 moved to new offices in Knox Hall. To coincide with the move and the expanded focus, the faculty decided to change the department’s name to MESAAS, the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies."
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