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Center News
Welcome to new members of the CCAS community!
The MAAS Class of 2024
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This fall, we welcomed 23 new students to the Master of Arts in Arab Studies program. This diverse cohort includes students from Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Morocco, Palestine, and Japan, as well as active duty military personnel, a diplomat, and a dual JD/MAAS student.
New Department of Education Grant Through the efforts of CCAS staff, Georgetown has been awarded a Department of Education Title VI grant valued at over $2 million. MAAS News (Student News) The grant designates the university as a National Resource Center on the Middle East and will support Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowships, as well as programming across the university related to the study of the region for the next four years. New Partnership for Intensive Visiting Scholar رئاز ثحاب
Language & Internships in Jordan
The incoming class at orientation this fall
Coco Tait
In August, we welcomed our newest staff member, Events & Program Manager Coco Tait, who is responsible for event management and general program administration for the center. Prior to joining CCAS, Coco was the office manager, fellowship coordinator, and arts & culture assistant at the Middle East Institute. She earned her B.A. in Ethics, History, & Public Policy and Music Performance, and her M.S. in International Security and Politics from Carnegie Mellon University.
Last spring, CCAS signed a three-year educational collaboration agreement with Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture in Jordan. The institute offers intensive language programs for students of Arabic, as well as internship and volunteer opportunities with local organizations. Located in the Jabal Amman neighborhood of Amman, Sijal also acts as a hub of intellectual and cultural events, bringing together scholars, artists, and specialists across a broad Faculty News سيردتلا ةئيه رابخأ range of expertise and disciplines, for seminars, workshops, and informal conversation. Last summer, six students from the MAAS program studied at Sijal, including Jillian Robins and Caitlin Cottrell, who both received FLAS funding. “What made studying at Sijal a particularly unique experience for me was their commitment to integrating Arabic dialect and content-based material into their curriculum,” says Robins. “Getting exposure to dialect while reading literature pieces by some of the Arab world's most prominent writers Staff Updates نيفظوملا رابخأرخآ in Sijal's literature content class was one of the highlights of my Board Member Profile يراشتسلأا summer, and I've found learning in this style improved my command of the language immensely.” This exposure to spoken dialect was also important to Cottrell, who says, “I was able to connect with Jordanians by listening to their thoughts and feelings in their native language, rather than the meaning behind their words getting lost in the translation to English.”
Visiting Fellows
CCAS is pleased to host two visiting fellows for the 2022-2023 academic year.
American Druze Foundation Fellow Dr. Benan Grams is a graduate of the MAAS program with a PhD from Georgetown’s History Department. She specializes in medical and public health history, and conducted her dissertation on cholera in Ottoman Syria. In the spring, Dr. Grams will teach “History of Migration in the MENA.” Qatar Post-Doctoral Fellow Dr. Mark Drury earned his PhD in anthropology from the City University of New York in 2018 with a focus on decolonization in the Western Sahara. In the spring semester, Dr. Drury will teach “Sahara: Authority, Mobility, Ecology.” Dispatches تايقرب
