Introduction

This coming July I will participate in an Intensive Summer Institute offered by Yale University's Council on Middle East Studies/PIER at the Macmillan Center. The institute, called "Metropolis: City Living from Timbuktu to Tashkent," begins at the Yale New Haven campus, goes on to New York and ends in Turkey where we will visit Ankara, Istanbul and several other cities. The main goal, particularly as I see it, is to gain an interdisciplinary understanding of how political events, history and culture impact the making of cities in the Middle East, and how, in turn, those cities shape social, political and economic dynamics. In the next few weeks, as I prepare for the Institute, I will be posting observations and reactions, and while traveling I will be sharing my impressions and many of the lessons I know I will learn. Stay tuned. This is going to be a fabulous adventure!