Center for South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies

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Center for South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies

CSAMES promotes research and scholarship on South Asia and the Middle East at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign .

The Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (CSAMES) promotes research and scholarship on South Asia and the Middle East. Our goal is to engage students and faculty in critical discussions and to create research and learning opportunities about South Asia and the Middle East and the ways these regions are connected to the rest of the world. Through our MA Program in South Asian and Middl

e Eastern Studies and undergraduate minors in either Islamic world studies or south Asian studies, CSAMES encourages students to learn about the cultures, societies, histories, politics, and religions of these two globally influential regions. Besides our academic programs, CSAMES organizes annual conferences and weekly lectures that are open to the public. Over the last decade, CSAMES has awarded over 40 scholarships to students for language study on campus or abroad in Egypt, India, Jordan, Morocco, Turkey and other countries in the regions. The Center also funds projects and initiatives to promote South Asian and Middle Eastern languages. Currently two of our faculty members are developing textbooks for Persian and Hindi. To learn more about our programs and activities, visit http://www.csames.illinois.edu/

09/03/2026

Tomorrow at 11am, a talk with Sayantan Dasgupta on “Academic Social Responsibility and Translation in India”. Register Now! https://calendars.illinois.edu/detail/779/33558408

08/17/2026

Another fantastic talk with the brilliant Laura Goffman. Her work is truly impressive and we highly recommend you to take a peek into her work in this episode! Read the full interview at csames.illinois.edu

08/10/2026

In this episode of interview with faculty, Prof. Rana Khoury talks about prolonged harm. She is a political scientist who studies conflict, displacement and
humanitarianism.

She is also of Syrian heritage, so we asked what it costs to study this topic:

"Accept that it is not normal", she said. "Give yourself grace. Turn on the analytical brain rather than be paralyzed by the grief. And keep doing the work of humanizing the people and places you study; there are people here, there are cultures here, there are literatures here, there are families here, there are people with agency here."

Read the full conversation on CSAMES website.

08/04/2026

Our next episode is out 🥳 Visit CSAMES website to read about Professor Osman's economic experiments and fascinating results!

08/03/2026

Impressive projects are endless at CSAMES! Congrats to Dr. Angela Williams on this amazing podcast collection! 🥳

07/29/2026

Let's listen to Professor Avital Livny tell us about her research on the Middle East and what it's like to sit in one of her classes. Read more: https://csames.illinois.edu/news/2026-07-29/conversation-professor-avital-livny.

07/24/2026

Faculty Spotlight, Professor Mukhtar Ali.
What draws someone to devote themselves to Islamic philosophy and the mysticism of Ibn ʿArabi?
In the first of our CSAMES Interview Series, Professor Mukhtar Ali tells us about his journey from the sciences into philosophy, his translation practices, and why poetry still matters in the modern age. Read more here: https://csames.illinois.edu/news/2026-07-23/conversation-professor-mukhtar-ali

06/13/2026

What an impossible task to summarize these two days! We learned a lot from each other from the geography of the Middle East, to cultures, languages, ethnicities, and then back to the space of our classrooms, teaching resources, and how to connect better to our students with ideas for designing syllabi. It was a blast to spend time with these wonderful teachers and our amazing lecturers. Cherry on top? The Middle Eastern cuisine and live performance!

06/10/2026

Snippets from today. We can't wait for more tomorrow 🤩

06/04/2026

Read more about Sami's journey on CSAMES website. We are so proud of our students!

Address

801 S. Wright Street
Champaign, IL
61820

Telephone

+12172655016

Website

http://www.csames.illinois.edu/

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