"Area studies"--a distinctively American way of organizing knowledge about the rest of the world--have been in a state of crisis in recent years, especially since the end of the cold war and the spread of globalization. In no field of inquiry has that crisis been as acute as in Middle Eastern studies. This volume focuses on one of the leading institutions in the field, Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), which was founded fifty years ago to further research and teaching about a region that remains enigmatic to the United States.

The book is divided into three parts: the first presents a critical look at the history of the Center against the backdrop of ongoing debates about Middle Eastern studies and area studies in general; the second examines the multifaceted operations of CMES that serve the scholarly community within and beyond Harvard; and the third consists of a series of essays, mainly by members of the core faculty of the Center, offering diverse assessments of the state of Middle Eastern studies today as well as visions of how Harvard might meet the complex challenges to the field in the years ahead.

Everyone in academia stresses quality. But what exactly is it, and how do professors identify it? Michèle Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive, powerful, peculiar world. Lamont aims to illuminate the confidential process of evaluation and to push the gatekeepers to both better understand and perform their role.

In The Program Era, Mark McGurl offers a fundamental reinterpretation of postwar American fiction, asserting that it can be properly understood only in relation to the rise of mass higher education and the creative writing program. An engaging and stylishly written examination of an era we thought we knew, The Program Era will be at the center of debates about postwar literature and culture for years to come.