In this course, we will investigate and discuss prevalent topics in the philological and linguistic study of Semitic languages. The weekly topics will touch on the major sub-categories of grammar and focus on methodology.
Introduction to Comparative Semitics or equivalent (e.g. general intro to Linguistics). Consent of Instructor required.
This course will discuss current trends in research for 19th and early 20th C Ottoman and Turkish history
In consultation with a faculty research adviser and with consent of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, students devote the equivalent of a one-quarter course to the preparation of their Research Project. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Please indicate that you wish to register for NEHC 29995 Section 01 with the Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in NELC. This is a workshop course designed to survey the fields represented by NELC and to assist students in researching andcompleting their Research Project. Students must get a Reading and Research form from their College Adviser and complete the form in order to be registered. Signatures are needed from the adviser and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Please indicate on the form that you wish to register for NEHC 29899 Section 01.
This seminar/colloquim focuses on the transformation of the Muslim Ottoman principality into an imperial entity--after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453--that laid claim to inheritance of Alexandrine, Roman/Byzantine, Mongol/Chinggisid, and Islamic models of Old World Empire at the dawn of the early modern era. Usually taught as a two-quarter reseach seminar, this year only the first quarter is offered, with a 15-20 paper due at the end. Special attention is paid to the transformation of Ottoman imperialism in the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver (1520-1566), who appeared to give the Empire its "classical" form. Topics include: the Mongol legacy; the reformulation of the relationship between political and religious institutions; mysticism and the creation of divine kingship; Muslim-Christian competition (with special reference to Spain and Italy) and the formation of early modernity; the articulation of bureaucratized hierarchy; and comparison of Muslim Ottoman, Iranian Safavid, and Christian European imperialisms. The quarter-long colloquium comprises a chronological overview of major themes in Ottoman history, 1300-1600. In addition to papers, students will be required to give an oral presentation on a designated primary or secondary source in the course of the seminar.
What does it mean to be “Armenian”? Despite centuries of dispersion and displacement, there has remained, in the Armenian diaspora, a sense of Armenian-ness—a sense, in other words, of being Armenian. This course will serve as an interrogation of and meditation on what that sense of being has looked like across time and space, as seen through the lens of pivotal musical and other artistic works from the post-genocide diaspora. Through in-depth analyses of these works and the discourses surrounding them, this course will trace the emergence, articulation, and negotiation of Armenian diasporic subjectivities and the ways in which those subjectivities have emerged in relation to and in conversation with power structures both internal and external to the Armenian communities under discussion. Diaspora, then, will be approached not as a fixed unit of analysis, but as something that emerges and is sustained through complex relationships and negotiations with sociopolitical forces both within and outside the diasporic community. Through this course, we will see that artistic expression in the Armenian diaspora functions as a site of agency: a site in which the question of what it is to be Armenian is explored in ways that shape, challenge, and upend notions and understandings of diasporic identity.
Students will develop their research papers, and we will continue to explore aspects of the late Ottoman press.
Course introduces students to the historical context and specific characteristics of the mass printed press (newspapers, cultural and political journals, etc.) in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th C. We will investigate issues such as content, censorship, production, readership and distribution through secondary reading and the examination of period publications.
Taking as its central theme the cultural situatedness of the earliest systems of mathematics and astronomy-from their origins in ancient Mesopotamia (Iraq, c. 3400 BCE) until the Common Era (CE)-this course explores topics in mathematical language and script, metrology, geometry and topology, music theory, definitions of time, models of stars and planets, medical astrology, and pan-astronomical hermeneutics in literature and an ancient board game. Pushing against boundaries separating the humanities and social and physical sciences, students discover how histories of science and mathematics could be decisively shaped not merely by sensory experience or axiomatic definition, but also by ideas and imagery derived from the cultures, societies, and aesthetics of their day.
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This graduate seminar offers a historiographical overview of the approaches to sect, religion, minority and gender in colonial and postcolonial contexts in the Middle East. We will discuss the conceptualizations of nationalism by different social scientists; explore the characteristics of Iranian, Turkish and Arab nationalism[s] in the years 1860-1979; examine the history of science and technology in the region and its influence on perceptions of Islamic modernity,; and ask whether sectarianism an old phenomenon or a new one, paying heed to the relationship between minorities and religions in the region.
