The Department of Middle Eastern Studies (DMES) provides all three degrees of the higher education (BA, follow-up MA, and PhD) and engages in scientific activities as well.
We offer programmes Middle Eastern Studies and Hebrew and Jewish Studies that are structured according to the up-to-date standards. The BA programme Middle Eastern Studies offers the following specializations: Arabic Studies, Iranian Studies, and Turkish Studies. The follow-up MA programme offers these specializations: History and Cultures of Middle East and Languages and Literatures of Middle East. Both programmes are firmly based on language teaching which is supplemented with courses on the history, religion, and literature of the given region.
Likewise, the BA and the follow-up MA programmes Hebrew and Jewish Studies emphasize language teaching, namely Biblical and Modern Hebrew. These classes are supplemented with courses on history and current issues.
The PhD programme Middle Eastern Studies (first opened in 2019/20) reacts to the rising significance of the research into the Middle Eastern issues in the academic and even social perspective. At CUFA, it was always possible to have a dissertation project on the Middle East under the programmes History and Culture of Asian and African Countries and Theory and History of Asian and African Countries. The new programme with a narrower focus allows the PhD students to better employ the expertise of our department’s academic staff and to participate in the department’s life, gain experience from a mutual dialogue and receive a PhD with an internationally acknowledged specialization. The PhD programme Jewish Studies is to be opened in the academic year 2020/21.