MESA Mentoring Award

Dr. Jane Hathaway is recognized for her exceptional mentorship to others in the field of Middle East studies.

 

Over a career spanning more than three decades, Professor Hathaway has not only produced a body of scholarship that has redefined our understanding of the Ottoman Empire, particularly Egypt and its peripheries, but she has also profoundly shaped the field of Middle East studies through her extraordinary and consistent commitment to mentoring graduate students, junior colleagues, and early-career faculty both within and far beyond her home institution.

 

Despite her prolific scholarly output and teaching responsibilities, Professor Hathaway has always carved out time to invest in her students, offering mentorship that is as rigorous as it is empathetic, as intellectually demanding as it is personally supportive.

 

Many note that Professor Hathaway made herself available to them at every juncture of their careers: guiding them through the difficult terrain of graduate study, aiding them with

fellowship and job applications, helping them revise their dissertations, providing crucial emotional and practical support during personal crises, and continuing to offer letters, references, and detailed feedback years after graduation. These are not isolated cases, but a consistent pattern.

 

Her commitment often began even before students entered graduate school. One advisee recounted how, when he reached out to Professor Hathaway as a prospective student, uncertain about applying to graduate programs in Ottoman studies, she responded within hours, offering advice, encouragement, and connecting him with her current students. That gesture, which she repeated with others, marked the beginning of what would become a deeply supportive and intellectually rich mentorship

 

Her pedagogical style is marked by high standards and painstaking attention to detail. Numerous students describe receiving dissertation chapters returned fully annotated—addressing everything from structure and argumentation to grammar and punctuation. For students whose first language was not English or who struggled with writing due to learning disabilities, this level of attention was transformative. 

 

Importantly, Professor Hathaway’s support extended to those for whom she was not the primary advisor. Time and again, students for whom she was a second reader, or even outside their committee entirely, describe how she created opportunities for learning—organizing independent studies, advising them on historiography, and teaching them how to position their work within broader scholarly debates. She also regularly opened her home to graduate students, fostering an inclusive intellectual community that offered warmth, collegiality, and guidance to international and domestic students alike. 

 

Professor Hathaway’s mentorship is not limited to the classroom or dissertation committee. She has provided critical professional development, teaching her students how to navigate the job market, negotiate academic bureaucracies, prepare conference presentations, and write research grants. She has written countless recommendation letters—sometimes even continuing to write them decades after a student has graduated. One mentee outside of her home institution recalled how, as a newly appointed assistant professor in need of mentorship, Professor Hathaway was the only senior scholar who responded to her request. That gesture marked the beginning of an enduring relationship, one that included manuscript reviews, academic advice, letters of recommendation, and regular phone calls for nearly two decades.

 

What sets Professor Hathaway apart as a mentor is not only the quantity of time and care she invests in her mentees but also her willingness to engage with their ideas seriously and collaboratively. Her mentees recount conference panels she organized that brought together graduate students, junior faculty, and established scholars from across fields—a testament to her belief that the academy should be a place of intellectual exchange and mutual support, not competition. As one former mentee put it, “Jane taught me through example that academia should not be treated as a competition but as a collective enterprise.”

 

That ethic of generosity, rigor, and collegiality is precisely what MESA’s Mentorship Award seeks to honor. Professor Hathaway has mentored an entire generation of scholars—formally and informally—across multiple institutions and disciplines. Her legacy is not only found in her scholarly contributions, but in the dozens of scholars she has shaped, guided, and uplifted— many of whom now seek to emulate her mentorship style in their own careers.

 

For her exceptional and sustained contributions to the professional and personal development of her students, and for the values she has instilled in the next generation of scholars, it is an honor to recognize Dr. Jane Hathaway, who has throughout her career encouraged the very finest of Middle East studies scholarship by mentoring generations of scholars.