NEHC

The class looks at images of, and narratives about, hell, from depictions of hell in the Quran to depictions of contemporary refugee camps as modern infernos. We will also study the construction of the image of Satan (Iblis) and of demons (jins) in various Islamic texts. The class will focus on reading of primary sources in translation (The Quran, Ibn 'Arabi, Abu al-'Ala al-Ma'ari, Nagib Mahfouz, Ghassan Kanfani) and the text book "Locating Hell in Islamic Traditions" , edited by Christian Lange (Brill, 2015, open online access)

Prior knowledge of the Middle East not required. This course aims to facilitate a general understanding of some key factors that have shaped life in this region, with primary emphasis on modern conditions and their background, and to provide exposure to some of the region's rich cultural diversity. This course can serve as a basis for the further study of the history, politics, and civilizations of the Middle East.

Despite the genocide, Armenians have known thriving political, sociocultural, ideological, and ecclesiastical centers in the twentieth century. The seminar Beyond Genocide & Diaspora: Armenians in the Middle East focuses on such centers: in Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Iran, and Turkey, amongst others. This will not be a journey of loss or simple rebirth, perspectives omnipresent in writings on modern Armenian history. Rather, we will be analyzing the history of power: on how Armenians experienced the everyday and the ordinary in the Middle East,  making these places their own, and how they manipulated and managed loss and renewal. At the same time, this seminar asks: what can we learn about these spaces, and the region more broadly, by looking at it through the lens of everyday Armenian sociopolitics? This analysis of Armenians does not only contribute to the study of Armenians, then. Rather, it shows how Armenians in the Middle East experienced politics everyday, and what those experiences can teach us about interlinked national and global events. This course also examines changing aspects of belonging, and explores how these concepts travel over time and space.

Stretching from Pakistan to Egypt and Greece, the Achaemenid Persian Empire dominated the Middle East for over 200 years (559-330 BCE) and was the first world empire in history. The Persian Empire brought diverse cultures, such as those of Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece, under a single rule, and witnessed transformations in the economies, religions, and political structures of the ancient world. In this course, we will trace the rise and fall of the Persian Empire and its afterlife, as the history of the Persian Empire continues to affect how we conceive of the Middle East today.

This course covers the period from ca. 600 to 1100, including the rise and spread of Islam, the Islamic empire under the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, and the emergence of regional Islamic states from Afghanistan and eastern Iran to North Africa and Spain.

This course covers the period from ca. 1750 to the present, focusing on Western military, economic, and ideological encroachment; the impact of such ideas as nationalism and liberalism; efforts at reform in the Islamic states; the emergence of the "modern" Middle East after World War I; the struggle for liberation from Western colonial and imperial control; the Middle Eastern states in the cold war era; and local and regional conflicts.

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.

This course will examine important themes in late Ottoman history such as institutional reform, the development of consultative structures, taxation, capitulations, and nationalism.

This two-quarter seminar 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. 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 first quarter comprises a chronological overview of major themes in Ottoman history, 1300-1600; the second quarter is divided between the examination of particular themes in comparative perspective (for example, the dissolution and recreation of religious institutions in Islamdom and Christendom) and student presentations of research for the seminar paper. In addition to seminar papers, students will be required to give an oral presentation on a designated primary or secondary source in the course of the seminar.