Since 1995 Abraham Marcus has served as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. "I knew from high school that I wanted to study the Middle East," he remembers. He began his intercultural study at home with his Syrian-born Jewish parents, who lived in Tel-Aviv, spoke Arabic, played Arab music, and fed their son Syrian food.

In an era of increasing specialization, he is an accomplished generalist, even something of a Middle Eastern Renaissance man, equally at ease discussing the tenets of Islam, the Algerian military, or the melismatic structures of Arab music.

Marcus has been a musician from childhood, trained in classical and flamenco guitar. He once accompanied Turkish singer Latif Bolat on the ud, a Middle Eastern lute, in front of an overflow audience on the UT campus. "I use the music as a way to cultivate appreciation of the richness and diversity of Middle Eastern cultures," he says, "and as a springboard for addressing from an unusual angle questions about art, aesthetics, fame, creativity, tradition, modernization, and the impact of technology."

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