Social Science Research Council

Internationalization, Inter-Disciplinarity and Boundary Crossing in Middle East, Russia/Eurasia and South Asia Studies on U.S. Campuses

Starting in 2004 the Social Science Research Council launched a research project focusing on the context and content of the production of knowledge on world regions on U.S campuses today. Funded through the U.S. Department of Education's International Research and Studies Program, the six-year project is entitled "Internationalization, Inter-Disciplinarity and Boundary Crossing: An Evaluation of Title VI National Resource Centers for the Middle East, Eurasia and South Asia." Specifically, the project seeks to assess the role that Title VI centers play, and potentially could enhance, in meeting the demands placed on international and area studies - and in particular the fields of Middle East, Eurasian and South Asian Studies - on U.S. campuses. The study also seeks to contextualize the work of these centers within transformations of the university landscape as well the changing location of the university in the broader public sphere.

The project focuses particularly on the NRCs for three regions: Middle East, Eurasia and South Asia. The current project constitutes a second phase and expands the scope of an earlier study that focused specifically on Middle East Studies (see webpage for further information on the earlier study). However, the focus on these three regions is also strategically chosen in order to capture interconnections and geographies that fall between area studies definitions (including Central Asia, the Persian Gulf region and the Indian Ocean), and thus is conducive for an evaluation of present structures of training and research and for assessing future needs.

The research component of the project focuses on three important challenges facing area studies:

• the academic and institutional challenge emerging out of the Post-Cold War context with its emphasis on global processes and de-emphasis of local contextual and linguistic knowledge;
• the public challenge arising in the aftermath of 9/11 and the 'war on terror' which has increased the workload of some of these centers in terms of student demand and public outreach as well as the resulting sense of heightened responsibility and accountability; and
• the structural and conceptual challenge of reorganizing the training of scholars on "cross-over" areas, such as Central Asia, given that expertise, language training and research resources tend to be scattered across, or fall between the cracks of, different area studies centers

Through site-visits, interviews and focus group discussions, the research addresses such questions as: What is the international capacity of Title VI centers in terms of their networks and access to overseas resources? How are the centers dealing with, and countering, the declining presence of crucial social science disciplines including economics, sociology and even political science in area studies? What is the potential, as well as the incentives and challenges faced by centers in designing creative responses to the challenge of studying thematic, cross-regional and global phenomena? Data will also be collected through an on-line survey and secondary analysis of publicly available data.

The SSRC is uniquely situated to conduct this study, given its long-standing commitment to regional and international programming, and seeks to make a thoughtful intervention in the current debates about area studies and international education. Given the significant academic and public responsibilities currently facing Title VI centers in the U.S., this timely project has broad relevance to a number of parties including the Title VI centers themselves, other area studies centers, educational, grant-making and policy-making agencies and other actors in the international academic community. The SSRC study differs in significant ways from other, more standard, evaluations in that it does not seek to comment on individual centers and campuses, nor to make funding recommendations. Rather it seeks to better understand the context in which NRCs operate both in terms of campus and nationally available resources and to produce an analysis that will aid a variety of actors and agencies engaged in programmatic planning in area and international studies.

The project is guided by Dr. Seteney Shami, Director of International Collaboration and Regional Programs at the SSRC. The research team includes senior consultant, Dr. Cynthia Miller-Idriss (Assistant Professor, International Education and Educational Sociology, New York University), two project researchers: Nick Gozik, (PhD candidate, International Education, NYU) and Anthony Koliha (Assistant Director, SSRC Eurasia Program) and a statistical consultant, Jeremy Browne (Brigham Young University - National Middle East Language Resource Center). Holly Danzeisen of the SSRC is the Project Coordinator and the focal point for queries concerning the project.