Paul Cobb Appointed Director of the Middle East Center

Paul Cobb, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC), has been appointed Director of the School’s Middle East Center (MEC).

MEC is a hub for nurturing research, teaching, and an appreciation of the Middle East, drawing on the extensive resources Penn has dedicated to the region. The Center offers a major and minor in Modern Middle Eastern Studies, teacher training workshops and programing with community colleges and minority-serving institutions, and more than 100 events a year, including lectures, workshops, and cultural programs, all of which are open to the public.

“My work with Penn’s students, alumni, and faculty tells me one thing clearly: Penn’s community is hungry for knowledge about the Middle East to help us make sense of current events and to better understand the deep global significance of the region,” says Cobb. “I am hugely excited to get to work in pursuing the continued mission of the Center, which will include offering new events, resources, and other initiatives that adhere to the highest academic standards and that highlight the diverse histories, politics, and cultures in this region that means so much to so many of us.”

Cobb has been teaching at Penn since 2008. He served as chair of MELC from 2015 to 2021 and is also Director of the Program in Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Cobb is a specialist in the history of the premodern Middle East, and his areas of interest include animal studies, Christian-Jewish-Muslim relations, and the history of travel and exploration. He is a recognized authority on the history of the medieval Crusades in their Islamic context.

Cobb’s publications include The Book of Contemplation: Islam and the Crusades (2008), a translation of the “memoirs” and other works of Usama ibn Munqidh, and The Race for Paradise: An Islamic History of the Crusades (2014), which has been translated into multiple languages.