This paper examines the role of disciplinarity in the construction of American academic knowledge of the Middle East with a focus on the discipline of Geography. Questions of space, place, and landscape, as well as research on human/environmental relationships, have recently been at the forefront of some of the most exciting research trends in Middle East studies. In spite of the fact that, as a discipline, Geography emphasizes the spatial, and environmental dimensions of social and cultural processes, much of the recent research in the "spatial turn" in Middle East studies appears to enter the field through disciplines other than Geography. While there have been geographers engaged in Middle East studies for many years, the discipline has been a marginal one. Recently, a young cohort of discipline-trained geographers appears to be playing an increasing role in scholarship on the Middle East. Some of this research directly responds to and contributes to work in Middle East area studies, but much of it is published and presented in other discipline-specific venues. I argue that the disconnections and overlaps between discipline-trained geographic research and research in other disciplines in the "spatial turn" is a product of historic and contemporary problems of disciplinarity in the production of Middle East area studies knowledge. The closure of the Geography department at Harvard and the ensuing exclusion of geography from the Ivy League had particular consequences, as geographers have lacked many of the institutional connections and resources bridging their research to other fields. Disciplinarity continues to be of issue, as decreasing university resources and an increasing need for external funding for core university functions intensifies the reliance, institutionally, on disciplinary conceptual approaches and methodologies as well as hiring, teaching, and tenure and promotion requirements structured around departmental (and thus, disciplinary) priorities. Middle East area studies research may be challenging to produce in disciplines straddling a hard science/social science/humanities divide, or in contexts where externally funded research which reifies disciplinary paradigms may take priority. This paper is based on interviews with geographers and senior academics in Middle East studies, a survey of recent published research in the "spatial turn" in Middle East studies, and on a historic examination of the production of Middle East area studies knowledge by geographers. This research contributes to existing research on the 'crisis in area studies' which interrogates the cultural and economic politics of Middle East area studies research.