The Center for Middle East Studies launches a year-long research initiative in 2025-26 titled "American-Islamic Exchanges in the Long 19th Century." This initiative, proposed by Gwendolyn Collaço, Faiz Ahmed and Karin Wulf, was the winner of a CMES funding competition in Spring 2025. 

Although attention to American interactions with the Islamic world have often foregrounded contemporary conflicts and geopolitics, the United States has long been in contact with Islamicate societies through the circulation of peoples, commodities, artworks and texts. Throughout the long 19th century, insurrections in Islamicate societies—of Greeks against the Ottoman Empire, Algerians against the French and Indians against the British—had particular resonances in American society. This year-long initiative examines this rich history of encounters, characterized by a mix of solidarity, fascination and exoticization, and the role that they played in defining America’s early identity. 

Engaging with questions of foreign trade, slavery, civil discord and humanitarianism, the initiative explores these topics in collaboration with other units on campus. In Fall 2025, a panel at the John Carter Brown Library, co-sponsored by the Brown 2026 initiative, will discuss comparative revolutions in the long 19th century. The "Fashioning Insurrection" exhibition at the John Hay Library will highlight the mercantile intersections of imperialism, race, religion and visual culture that transformed revolutionary garb from abroad into American fashion. A symposium in Spring 2026 will expand upon these themes, and collaborations with RISD, MIT and Yale are in the works. CMES is delighted to work with the organizers of this truly interdisciplinary initiative, and looks forward to sharing further details in the coming year.