2019-2020

This course will give an overview of the archaeology of ancient Mesopotamia. We will examine the material remains of various cultures in and around ancient Mesopotamia and engage with themes of social complexity, urbanism, collapse, and continuity/change through time. Students in this survey course will gain basic knowledge of the archaeological data used to create a picture of life in the Mesopotamian region in ancient times.

“This course fulfills the requirements of a survey course in Mesopotamian civilization as defined by the Ancient PhD programs in NELC and MA program in the CMES.”

This course provides an interdisciplinary survey of modern Shi’a thought and identity in the Middle East. It complicates dominant narratives and conventional understandings of sectarianism, Shi'a Islam, and geopolitical conflict in the Middle East by differentiating between distinct yet overlapping factors such as state competition (i.e. between Iran and Saudi Arabia), historical legacies of empire and state building, and actual substantive theological and intellectual differences between Shi’a and Sunni Islam. It looks at the origins of Shi’ism and who the Shi’a are today as the second largest denomination within Islam including their diverse ethnic, geographic, cultural, and political backgrounds. The course will focus on modern intellectual and political movements in Shi’a thought from the post-colonial period onwards including Shi'a revivalist thought and national liberation movements in the early 20th century; Shi’a clerical innovation and institutions (including wilayat al-faqih, the theocratic system dominant in Iran); mass pilgrimage practices and sociological changes in the Shi’a world; Iran's Islamic revolution; and, the transnational politics of Shi’a political parties and armed movements, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (Hashd al-Sha’abi), and Yemen’s Ansarallah (the Houthis). The course will also cover the “Axis of Resistance” that has Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and other partners engaging in new socio-political and intellectual paradigms in the Middle East.

This course has two goals. The first is an interior goal, to introduce students to the major categories of knowledge created and employed in ancient Assyria and Babylonia, as the Mesopotamian “core curriculum.” This was the corpus of material that had to be mastered by scribes of the Neo-Sumerian and Neo-Assyrian periods, including proverbs, lists, omens, geographies, medicine, magic, law, mathematics, history, royal wisdom, and accounting.

The second goal is “exterior”: to examine the epistemological precepts on which knowledge was constructed. What was held to be knowable? What methods and techniques were used to identify and justify knowledge as valid or authentic? What roles did copying, editing, authorship, and literacy play in the production of knowledge texts? How the organization and preservation of texts create canons and curricula?

No prior knowledge of Mesopotamian history or literature is required. Students are asked to think with the primary texts, not to demonstrate mastery of them.

While the words “devil,” “demon,” and “Satan” usually conjure the image of a horned and hoofed archfiend, this has not always been the case. Students in this course will discover both the origins of and complications to dominant popular images of “the Devil” by engaging ancient Middle Eastern and Mediterranean texts, including Mesopotamian literature, the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and other early Christian and Jewish texts. We will discuss Satan’s origins as the biblical god Yahweh’s henchman, Mesopotamian and Greco-Roman conceptions of subordinate divine entities, Hellenistic and Roman-period tendencies towards cosmic dualism, and much more. Students will also have the opportunity to explore pop culture and political discourse to examine how Biblical and other ancient demons productively recur in such contexts. A guiding question will be why the category of “demon” has proven so productive and necessary to diverse religious worldviews and what the common features and actions of these figures reveal about persistent human anxieties.

This course is an introduction to the religions of the ancient Middle East—Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia—with an emphasis on the variety to these religions and the ways regional religious expression and practice changed over time. We will read several famous myths, hymns, and other narrowly “religious” texts—including excerpts from the Akkadian creation myth Enūma eliš, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and a Hittite myth of a disappearing god. But we will also explore visual art and other material culture sources and we will read letters, treaties, and other more mundane texts to define how these sources differently show how religion manifested “on the ground.” The social and political resonances of religion will be stressed, with examples ranging from kings dubiously claiming the rediscovery of important religious texts to international theft of divine statues. We will discuss the influence of ancient Middle Eastern religions on that of neighboring regions, especially the Greco-Roman world. Students will pursue creative projects with the goal of more deeply understanding ancient Middle Eastern religions; these may include adapting a known religious phenomenon to a different medium or genre or even fabricating new texts, images, or practices while demonstrating their innovative benefits and historical connections to skeptical adherents.

Jewish Civilization is a two-quarter sequence that explores the development of Jewish culture and tradition from its ancient beginnings through its rabbinic and medieval transformations to its modern manifestations. Through investigation of primary texts-biblical, Talmudic, philosophical, mystical, historical, documentary, and literary-students will acquire a broad overview of Jews, Judaism, and Jewishness while reflecting in greater depth on major themes, ideas, and events in Jewish history. The Autumn course will deal with antiquity to the early medieval periods. Its readings will include works from the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus, the Rabbis, Yehudah Halevy, and Maimonides. All sections of each course will share a common core of readings; individual instructors will supplement with other materials. It is recommended, though not required, that students take these two courses in sequence. Students who register for the Autumn Quarter course will automatically be pre-registered for the winter segment.

The first quarter will take the form of a colloquium on the sources for and the literature on the political, social, economic, technological, and cultural history of Western and Central Asia from approximately 1500 to 1750. Classroom presentations and a short paper are required.

This 10-week crash-course surveys Armenian history and elements of culture (religion, mythology and music, manuscript illumination, art and architecture) as well as offer a mosaic of traditions and customs (festivals and feasts, birth and wedding rituals, funerary cult) of Armenia. It also discusses transformations of Armenian identity and symbols of 'Armenianness' through time (especially in Soviet and post-Soviet  eras) based on such elements of national identity, as language, religion, art or shared history. Recommended for students with interest in Armenian Studies or related fields, in Area or Civilizations Studies, Art and Cultural Studies, etc.

The course introduces beginning graduate students to the range of basic resources, methods, and analytical tools that must be mastered by those engaging in the study of the Islamic Middle East.  As such, it covers the period from the seventh century to the present and is focused on developing professional skills necessary for successful completion of a master's or doctoral program.

This seminar will examine the intersection of culture and Zionism. We will begin by considering the historical formation referred to as "cultural Zionism" and examining its ideological underpinnings. Other topics include: Hebrew revival, the role of culture in the Zionist revolution, Israeli culture as Zionist culture. Readings include: Ahad Haam, Haim Nahman Bialik, S.Y. Agnon, Orly Kastel-Blum, Edward Said, Benjamin Harshav.