Middle Eastern Communities and Migrations Student Research Paper Series

The Middle Eastern Communities and Migrations (MECM) Student Research Paper Series (SRPS) highlights the research and writing skills of JMU undergraduate students for the university community and wider public audience. The SRPS is a forum for JMU students working on topics related to the Middle East to publish their work in an on-line peer-reviewed occasional paper series.

MECM SRPS #1 2010: Building Knowledge in and of Afghanistan

The first set of papers in the MECM SRPS were originally produced in Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi’s HIST 372 Afghanistan in Regional and Global Systems class during the fall 2010 semester. All students in that class produced research papers focused on Nationalism in Afghanistan, and a number of HIST 372 students presented their work at the university-wide Building Knowledge in and of Afghanistan (BKA) conference held the following spring 2011 semester. The student papers delivered at the BKA conference received a great deal of feedback from two JMU alumni who entered History PhD programs after graduating from JMU. John Miller and H. William Warner served as Discussants at the BKA conference and provided each student presenter with oral and written comments that have been incorporated in the following essays.

MECM SRPS #2 2017: Early Modern Islamicate Histories

This set of papers brings together research on the great Muslim empires of the early modern world. The studies by Rachel Barton and Dylan Russell were written in Dr. Timothy J. Fitzgerald’s “HIST 341: History of the Ottoman Empire” course during the spring of 2016. Connor Hamel’s paper was produced in Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi’s “HUM 252: Global South Asia” course in the fall of 2016. The authors were asked to set their work in conversation with current scholarship, use primary sources where possible, and consider global contexts and comparisons. The papers were accepted and revised after a blind review process, involving three faculty experts in each case.

MECM SRPS #3 2020: Modern Afghanistan Papers II

These essays were prepared as Final Papers for Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi’s HIST 372 Afghanistan in Regional and Global Systems class in the fall 2018. Dr. Hanifi and the authors are grateful peer-review commentary from Graduate Students at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, London School of Economics, and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.