This project examines the campus-building activities of the Near East College Association (NECA), founded by the American industrialist Cleveland H. Dodge in 1919, and traces the development of an American geopolitical project operating through four interlinked colleges in post-WWI Lebanon, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece. Focusing on the sites, buildings, and programs conceived and implemented by NECA between 1919 and 1964, the research explores the ways in which “character building,” “international goodwill,” and “economic improvement” were elaborated through both discursive and spatial means, promoted through modern and extensive campuses, articulating the United States’ evolving economic and geopolitical ambitions. The project offers new insights into the overlooked influence of the United States in shaping the post-Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean and highlights the crucial and multifaceted role of architecture in consolidating complex political, economic, and cultural interests at an urban and regional scale.

Yasmina El Chami is an architect and lecturer (assistant professor) in architectural humanities at the University of Sheffield. She holds a PhD in architecture from the University of Cambridge, an MPhil in architecture and urban design from the Architectural Association, and a BArch from the American University of Beirut. Her first book (forthcoming) explores the colonial nature of competing missionary institutions in Ottoman Lebanon. Her current project examines the geopolitics of American campus building in the post–World War One Eastern Mediterranean. El Chami's research has been supported by several fellowships and awards, including from the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Institute of Historical Research, University of London, the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, and the Cambridge International Trust. Her writings have appeared in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Architectural Theory Review, ABE: Architecture Beyond Europe, and in edited books.