For more information about the 2022 Institute, please visit the website here.

The states, societies, and peoples of the Middle East have helped shape the history of the Americas for over 500 years. Despite the many sociocultural, religious, and demographic contributions of Middle Easterners in the Americas, the connection is often only acknowledged in K-12 settings in the context of contemporary conflicts, that is, terrorism, war, and sectarianism at home and abroad. The 2022 Summer Institute is designed to help teachers conceptualize and design ways to give richer historical and contemporary depth to the entwined histories of the Middle East and the Americas, going back to the Columbian exchange and carrying forward through the 20th century.

Teachers will hear from expert scholars on topics that include: How concerns and fears about the Ottoman Empire and Islam shaped Columbus’ journeys to the Americas, perceptions of the Middle East in the early American imaginary, the continuation and development of Islam amongst slave populations and later immigrants, literary movements that stretched between the Middle East and the Americas, and cultural connections that have shaped the fabric of New York City. 

In addition to lectures and discussions with leading scholars, the institute will include field trips to relevant local sites, and a group project led and advised by the Institute’s Academic Director, Dr. Peter Valenti and institute faculty. 

This year's Institute will have two options for attendance, in person or virtual. Please fill out this eventbrite form if you will be attending the in-person Summer Institute. If you are attending the virtual Summer Institute, register here. Registration closes on July 10, 2022.

IN-PERSON SUMMER INSTITUTE

Dates: July 18, 2022 - July 22, 2022

Time: 10am (EST) - 3pm (EST)

Location: Kevorkian Center, 255 Sullivan Street

Eventbrite Registration

VIRTUAL SUMMER INSTITUTE

Dates: July 25, 2022 - July 27, 2022

Time: 12:30pm (EST) - 2:30pm (EST)

Location: Zoom

For more information about our 2022 Summer Institute, visit our page here.  

Peter C. Valenti has been teaching in the field of Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies since 1999, over ten of those years here at NYU, including graduate courses on how to teach the Middle East in high school for the Social Studies Education program in NYU Steinhardt. He has specialized in the socioeconomic and political history of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as well as pursuing research in state-building in Iraq, Islamist movements, and Islamic and Arabic literature. As part of his professional career he has lived and conducted research in a variety of countries throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.  In addition to his academic work, Valenti has worked in a variety of editorial and media positions, contributing to the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR and World Press Review.

For lectures, resources, and more information about the 2021 Institute, please visit the website here.

Abstract: This institute will dive into issues that affect young people in the Middle East and Latin America. At a moment when political change in both regions greatly impacts the experiences of young people and media technologies are increasingly globalized to allow greater cultural and political connections across and through these regions, there is a burgeoning opportunity for educators to connect experiences in their classrooms with children from around the world. The institute will draw on the burgeoning fields of youth studies in these two regions and on the increasing availability of youth and children-focused media and literature to introduce and enhance teacher’s engagement with youth culture in these two regions so that they can better globalize their classrooms. Teachers will get the opportunity to engage with and hear from scholars whose work analyzes youth culture and politics in historical and contemporary settings, as well as award-winning authors of children’s and young adult literature from both regions. Teachers will work synchronously and asynchronously on group projects that will serve as incubators for in-class activities on issues addressed in the institute, and will receive a bounty of scholarly resources to buttress their curricular planning and assessment. 

Format: The Institute will be presented in a fully online format. Teachers will be asked to watch two pre-recorded lectures (roughly one hour each), every week, and attend 1.5 hour synchronous zoom meetings every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday in July. Tuesday and Wednesday Sessions will be centered on discussion with the guest speakers for the week and Thursday Sessions will be centered on small group discussions related to ongoing group projects. 

Topics: Themes addressed in the Institute may include: 

• Revolution/Protest

• YA/Children’s literature/Storytelling

• Histories of childhood

• Immigration

• Disability

   

   

Peter C. Valenti has been teaching in the field of Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies since 1999, over ten of those years here at NYU, including graduate courses on how to teach the Middle East in high school for the Social Studies Education program in NYU Steinhardt. He has specialized in the socioeconomic and political history of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as well as pursuing research in state-building in Iraq, Islamist movements, and Islamic and Arabic literature. As part of his professional career he has lived and conducted research in a variety of countries throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.  In addition to his academic work, Valenti has worked in a variety of editorial and media positions, contributing to the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR and World Press Review.

For lectures, resources, and more information about the 2020 Institute, please visit the website here.

Presented by the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies & the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at NYU.

It may be common to hear in popular media that we are now living in "unprecedented times" but in reality we are experiencing something that was quite common for millennia.  As a matter of fact, pandemics were part of the regular rhythm of life for most people around the world, and perhaps the only thing that is "unprecedented" today was our expectation that we were post-pandemic.

Realizing this fact does not, however, give comfort or encouragement to our students who are living through a bewildering and challenging moment in history.  Not only are we grappling with the disruptive effects of this situation as pedagogues but we should also aim to inform, prepare, and challenge our students in order to strengthen them in dealing with the days and months ahead.

Thus the purpose of this summer institute, indeed "unprecedented" is an appropriate term, is to provide through a month-long virtual format some of the tools and content that will be useful for teachers in designing engaging curricula for students in the age of Covid-19.  How might historical incidences of plague in the Mediterranean and Middle East underscore the continued impact of global trade networks?  How have colonial legacies in Latin America impacted the infrastructural and governmental capabilities in dealing with disease?  What is the role of xenophobia towards and neglect of vulnerable populations, whether Middle Eastern refugee groups or indigenous communities in Latin America, in magnifying the intensity and probability of the spread of disease?  What can we learn from cultural or "traditional" health practices of these communities in preventing the spread of disease?

The institute's sessions will address important theoretical approaches to terms such as "disease," "pandemic," "public health," and "quarantine."  Specialists will be presenting on their expertise drawn from a variety of fields, such as area studies, history, medical anthropology, political science, humanitarianism and human rights studies. Through a comparative approach that utilizes Latin America and the Middle East as two specific case studies, though with constant connections, influences, and impacts from/to the wider globe, we will explore both historical episodes of disease as well as the contemporary.

Peter C. Valenti has been teaching in the field of Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies since 1999, over ten of those years here at NYU, including graduate courses on how to teach the Middle East in high school for the Social Studies Education program in NYU Steinhardt. He has specialized in the socioeconomic and political history of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as well as pursuing research in state-building in Iraq, Islamist movements, and Islamic and Arabic literature. As part of his professional career he has lived and conducted research in a variety of countries throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.  In addition to his academic work, Valenti has worked in a variety of editorial and media positions, contributing to the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR and World Press Review.

This year's Kevorkian Summer Institute for Teachers, co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, focused on the topics of commodity production, networks of trade, and political power in the Middle East and Latin America. Both historical and contemporary in nature, the institute tackled broader themes of imperialism, state-formation, labor, modern culture, and global capitalism by tracing commodities that are produced and traded in these regions. Doing so facilitates a transnational understanding of how these regions and societies evolved. Rather than seeing these geographically disparate regions as separate from one another, a multi-sited and multi-scalar analysis of commodities will uncover the interconnections between Latin America and the Middle East.

Peter C. Valenti has been teaching in the field of Middle Eastern & Islamic Studies since 1999, over ten of those years here at NYU, including graduate courses on how to teach the Middle East in high school for the Social Studies Education program in NYU Steinhardt. He has specialized in the socioeconomic and political history of Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf, as well as pursuing research in state-building in Iraq, Islamist movements, and Islamic and Arabic literature. As part of his professional career he has lived and conducted research in a variety of countries throughout the Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey.  In addition to his academic work, Valenti has worked in a variety of editorial and media positions, contributing to the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR and World Press Review.