Transforming the Teaching and Learning of Middle East Studies with Student Partners

Abstract This article reflects on opportunities for Middle East studies practitioners to engage relational pedagogies in their practices of teaching and learning in higher education. In particular, students as partners (SaP) has become an accepted approach to achieving pedagogical transformations, including curriculum cocreation and redesign. We discuss our experiences with a funded SaP course redesign project and our partnership, consisting of a history faculty member and two former students of the faculty instructor’s Middle East history course at a research university in Canada. We join existing scholarship on the benefits of student–faculty collaborations and we reflect on what the SaP approach can offer instructors in higher education in Middle East studies. In reflecting on our experiences of the partnership and our relational work, we argue for the importance of SaP in the construction of Middle East studies curricula and the underexplored impacts of faculty–student partnerships for those involved in SaP projects, including opportunities for mentorship, professional development, and decolonizing pedagogies.