Welcome

Welcome to the Home Page of the Program of Asian and Middle East Studies (AMES) at Northwestern University!

AMES is an undergraduate program that provides opportunities for undergraduates to learn in depth about some part of the vast area covered by Asia and the Middle East. Some majors go on to law, management or medical schools with the intention of practicing their professions abroad where they can make use of their specialized area knowledge. Other majors move directly into jobs with schools or non-profit organizations or businesses. All students who take AMES courses enrich themselves by expanding their understanding and empathy for rich civilizations distant from American experience.

While Northwestern does not have Asian and Middle East Studies area programs at the graduate level, graduate students may study these areas in discipline-based departments such as History, Art History, Political Science, Comparative Literature and Sociology.

The Asian and Middle East Studies program includes faculty specialists from Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences as well as other Northwestern schools. The program is an umbrella program rather than a department, meaning that it draws on the resources of many departmentally-based faculty to teach the courses in the program. It offers students of all schools at Northwestern the choice of a disciplinary major, an adjunct major, or a minor, with concentrations on East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. The program has two majors, one with a minimum of two years of language study, one with three years of language study (disciplinary majors), and the second without a language requirement (the adjunct major). We do however strongly encourage students to study a foreign language and to study abroad. We also offer an honors program in which majors may complete an independent study and write a senior research thesis. See the program director for help in academic planning.

Laura Hein
Director, Asian and Middle East Studies, and Professor History