Ussama Makdisi

Ussama Makdisi is professor of history at the University of Houston, and was the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University. In 2020, Makdisi was a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. In 2012-2013, Makdisi was an invited Resident Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin). Makdisi was awarded the Berlin Prize and spent the Spring 2018 semester as a Fellow at the American Academy of Berlin.

Dr. Makdisi was recognized as a Carnegie Scholar for his original scholarship regarding Muslim societies and communities, both in the United States and abroad. He is the author of  Age of Coexistence: The Ecumenical Frame and the Making of the Modern Arab World (2019), Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (2008) and Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promise of U.S.-Arab Relations, 1820–2001 (2010). He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University and his B.A. from Wesleyan University.

(Fall 2003, Spring 2015)