2022-2023

This is a two-quarter seminar. The course concentrates on the written language and aims at enabling students to use Modern Hebrew for research purposes. The course is designed to prepares students to read and do research using scholarly texts. Students will build on their fundamental knowledge of Hebrew grammar and the most common vocabulary terms used in scholarly writing, while developing reading comprehension skills and working intensively with academic texts in their areas of research . By the end of the course, students are expected not only to be able to successfully satisfy their departmental language requirements but also to have a great set of skills that would allow them to read any given text, written in Modern Hebrew. (The tern “Modern Hebrew” covers primarily literature from the mid 20th century to current time)

This course is designed for students who possess a basic knowledge of modern‭ ‬and/or Biblical Hebrew‭ (‬either the first year course or the placement exam‭ ‬are prerequisites‭). ‬The main objective is to provide students with the‭ ‬skills necessary to approach Modern Hebrew prose‭, ‬both fiction and‭ ‬non-fiction‭. Students learn to use the dictionary‭, ‬and approach unfamiliar‭ ‬texts and vocabulary‭. Many syntactic structures are introduced‭, ‬including‭ ‬simple clauses‭, ‬coordinate and compound sentences‭. ‬Throughout the year‭, ‬students read‭, ‬write‭, ‬and speak extensively and are required to analyze the‭ ‬grammatical structures of assigned materials‭.

The second quarter of Intermediate Arabic

This sequence concentrates on the acquisition of speaking, reading, and aural skills in modern formal Arabic.

This course surveys primary and secondary scholarship to answer the deceptively simple questions of what Sunnism is, when it began, and how it developed. We will read primary sources from the fields of history, theology, and hadith studies, and compare these texts with influential narratives of Sunni history in secondary scholarship

What are the major developments in thinking and in literature in the Islamic world of the “middle periods” (c. 950-1800 C.E.). How did noteworthy Muslims at various points and places think through questions of life and death, man and God, faith and belief, the sacred and the profane, law and ethics, tradition vs. innovation, power and politics, class and gender, self and other? How did they wage war; make love; shape the built environment; eat and drink; tell stories; educate their youth; preserve the past; imagine the future; perform piety, devotion, and spirituality; construe the virtuous life and righteous community, etc.? How did these ideas change over time? What are some of the famous, funny, naughty, and nice books read in the pre-modern Muslim world? We will survey a broad geographic area stretching from Morocco and Iberia to the Maldives and India--even into the New World--through lectures, secondary readings, and discussion. We will engage with a variety of primary texts in English translation, as well as various visual, aural, and material artifacts.

Ottoman poetry is notoriously very difficult to understand. This course is designed as an introduction to the technical and aesthetic aspects of the genre. We will also try to understand the culture around the social milieu of Ottoman poets”

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.

Building on the basics of grammar, vocabulary, and orthographic styles learned in EGPT 20210, this course focuses on the reading and analysis of Late Egyptian texts from the various genres.

Today, the Middle East is host to the world’s largest humanitarian crises since World War II. This course examines the politics and ethics of humanitarian intervention in the region, including emergency medical aid and global healthcare. It takes a critical approach to humanitarian action, focusing on long-term, lived effects as well as intentions, and foregrounds the experiences, voices, and perspectives of local aid recipients. In class we will examine works produced by leading Middle East scholars including anthropologist, sociologist, historians, philosophers, and political scientists. Beginning in the 1980s, with the rise of global humanitarianism, and leading up to the present day, topics covered in class include but are not limited to: the politics of vulnerability and innocence; the body in humanitarianism; war and refugees; food aid; children and global humanitarianism; and medical aid and global health.