“World War I in the Middle East” is a four-week college and university faculty summer seminar for sixteen participants to explore World War I in the Middle East. The seminar seeks to understand the impact of the Middle East on World War I and the impact of World War I on the Middle East. The directors note that few scholarly works have, to date, assessed World War I in the Middle East, yet the time is ripe to do so in view of “the opening of important state archives” and the appearance of “rich troves of non-governmental sources.” The seminar hopes to “launch ‘World War I in the Middle East’ as a distinct subfield of historical study” by combining military, social, and diplomatic history. The first week explores the road to the Ottoman Empire’s entry into the war; the second week studies the war itself; the third week examines the impact of the war; and the fourth week (in which participants make presentations) assesses the peace settlement. The seminar director, Mustafa Aksakal, is the author of The Ottoman Road to War in 1914. He currently holds an NEH Fellowship to write his second book, The Unknown War: The First World War in the Middle East. His co-director, Elizabeth Thompson, a historian at the University of Virginia, has also written two books (one forthcoming) on World War I in the Middle East. Joining Aksakal and Thompson are four guest lecturers: one Turkish historian (Erol Köroğlu of Boğaziçi University, one Palestinian historian (Salim Tamari of Birzeit University), and two historians from the United States (John Milton Cooper of the University of Wisconsin, and Ronald Suny of the University of Michigan).
