Faculty

Ronald A. Messier
Senior Lecturer in History

PhD, University of Michigan, 1972

Medieval Islalm, Medieval Europe, Historical Archaeology.

Telephone: please use email for contact
Email: ronald.a.messier@vanderbilt.edu
Office Hours: On an archaelogical dig summer 2008

Personal website: http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11278

Ron Messier retires July 2008. However he continues to be active in the Middle East History academic world with a book out in September, an edited volume of essays, titled The Worlds of Ibn Khaldun. He has also just been elected to a three year term as President of the Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Seminar (SERMEISS), a regional professional organization of Middle East scholars. He is returning to Morocco in May 2008 for a fourth season of excavation at medieval Aghmat.

Ron Messier is a senior lecturer in history.  From 1972 to 2004, he was professor of Middle East History and historical archaeology at Middle Tennessee State University.  His teaching and research focus on Islam and the history and archaeology of the Middle East and North Africa.  From 1987 to 1998, he directed an ongoing excavation of the ancient city of Sijilmasa, a city in southeastern Morocco, famous for its gold trade and its contacts with Timbuctu and other cities of West Africa. In recognition of that work, he received the university's prestigious Outstanding Research Award in 1997.  He is currently directing a new archaeology project near Marrakech, Morocco.  He has published over two dozen articles, co-edited a book entitled Jihad and its Times, and is now completing a monograph with Dr. James Miller of Clemson University on Sijilmasa.  He has won several teaching awards including the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education award as Tennessee Professor of the Year for 1993.  Since 1992, he has been the lecturer for over twenty study tours, including nine tours to Morocco, three to Syria and Jordan, three to Egypt, two to Turkey, two to Tunisia, one to Oman in the Persian Gulf, two to Israel, and two to Mali and Timbuctu.  He is currently working on two research projects: the medieval Islamic city of Aghmat in Morocco and a study of Jesus in the Quran and Islamic tradition.

Courses taught:             Hist 115W, The Crusades and the Muslim Response
                                    Hist 115W, Jesus in the Quran
                                    Hist 140, Global History since 1500
                                    Hist 200, History Workshop
                                    Hist 212, Medieval Europe 300-1000
                                    Hist 244, English-History Workshop (Crossing Cultural Borders)
                                    Hist 255, Islamic World to 1798

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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