2018-2019

This three-quarter sequence enables the students to reach an advanced level of proficiency in the Armenian language. Reading, discussion and writing assignments include a selection of original Armenian literature and excerpts from mass media. A considerable amount of historical-political and social-cultural issues about Armenia are skillfully built into the course for students who have intention to conduct research in Armenian Studies and related area studies or to pursue work in Armenia.

This course takes place outside of Chicago and can only be taken by arrangement with the instructor well in advance of the quarter in which it is offered.

This three-quarter sequence enables the students to reach an advanced level of proficiency in the Armenian language. Reading, discussion and writing assignments include a selection of original Armenian literature and excerpts from mass media. A considerable amount of historical-political and social-cultural issues about Armenia are skillfully built into the course for students who have intention to conduct research in Armenian Studies and related area studies or to pursue work in Armenia.

This is not just a literature course: it is at the same time an exploration of Iran’s recent history as mirrored in satirical works. Against the background of Iran’s recent history, from late Qajar period to present, this course will focus on a selection of satirical works (mainly in verse, but also some prose) in Persian language. Apart from a thorough review of the recent history, and apart from providing a lot of fun through satirical works, the students will be introduced to more advanced Persian. The secondary sources recommended will include articles, interviews and reviews in both Persian and English. 

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.

An introductory course in the written language of the Orkhon Inscriptions, dating back to the 5th-8th Century Kök Türk State of Central Eurasia, and of related inscriptions from the Yenisei River area, Mongolia, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The language of the inscriptions is considered to be the ancestor of the majority of Turkic languages spoken today, and uses a distinctive alphabet sometimes known as the Old Turkic Runiform Alphabet. The course covers a brief historic overview, basic grammar, reading selections from the inscriptions in the original and in translation, and familiarization with the alphabet itself.