2022-2023

This course focuses on the ways in which anthropologists have approached gender in the modern Middle East and North Africa. In addition to providing a survey of key anthropological theories and debates about gender in the discipline of anthropology, it also centers on the writings of local authors, social scientists, and critical theorists, such as Islamic feminists and “native” scholars. Key themes will be: kinship, sexuality, and the body; women and nationalism; post-colonialism; violence, war and displacement; the politics of childhood and youth; and globalization and neoliberalism.

This course gives an overview of the richness of Mesopotamian Literature (modern Iraq) written in the 3rd-1st millennium BC. We will read myths and epics written on clay tablets in the Sumerian and Akkadian language in English translation and discuss content and style, but also the religious, cultural and historic implications. Particular focus will be on the development of stories over time, the historical context of the literature and mythological figures. The texts treated cover not only the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, but also various legends of Sumerian and Akkadian kings, stories about Creation and World Order, and destruction. The topics covered range from the quest for immortality, epic heroes and monsters, sexuality and love.

This course covers the rise and spread of Islam, the Islamic empire under the Umayyad and early Abbasid caliphs, and the emergence of regional Islamic states from Afghanistan and eastern Iran to North Africa and Spain. The main focus will be on political, economic and social history.

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.

Organized thematically and covering a region that spans from North Africa to Iran, we will use the analytics of race and gender in an intersecting way to explore topics in the Middle East such as: colonialism, slavery, Arab Nationalism, Zionism, whiteness, racism, eugenics and scientific racism, and global solidarity movements. In so doing, our course will reveal that race is an operative category in the study of Middle East history, the historical racial logics operating in various Middle Eastern countries, and how race and gender intersect at the site of individual as well as the effects of this.

This course is designed for anyone interested in race theory, gender theory, intersectionality, and Middle East history. By the end of this course, students will have the tools to think in a gendered and raced multidimensional way about aspects of Middle East history that do not often receive such an intersectional treatment. Additionally, they will develop the methodological tools to discern local race and gender logics that might be different than what they’re most familiar with. Finally, through coming to understand their relationship to the knowledge of our course, students will also be able to use the course as a springboard for continued learning in other courses that treat race, gender, and the Middle East.

This sequence explores the thought and literature of the Islamic world from the coming of Islam in the seventh century C.E. through the development and spread of its civilization in the medieval period and into the modern world. Including historical framework to establish chronology and geography, the course focuses on key aspects of Islamic intellectual history: scripture, law, theology, philosophy, literature, mysticism, political thought, historical writing, and archaeology. In addition to lectures and secondary background readings, students read and discuss samples of key primary texts, with a view to exploring Islamic civilization in the direct voices of the people who participated in creating it. All readings are in English translation. No prior background in the subject is required. This course sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.

Al-Mutanabbī is arguably the best known and most quoted poet of the Arabic language. Scores of streets and bookstores in the Arab Middle East are named after him, as are schools, poetry festivals, markets, and even ships. What did al-Mutanabbī do to merit this enormous fame? Was it the power of the panegyrics that he composed celebrating the victories of important kings and princes? Or was it the biting humor of the satires that he wrote censuring these same potentates? Indeed, his poems provoked great political, lexical, critical, and grammatical debate, during his lifetime and beyond. A close reading of a selection of al-Mutanabbī’s poetry in various genres and medieval critique of his alleged “sariqāt,” will—inshaallah!—illuminate some of the answers.

The purpose of this three-quarter sequence is to enable the student to acquire a knowledge of the vocabulary and grammar of Classical Hebrew sufficient to read prose texts with the occasional assistance of a dictionary. The first quarter focuses on the inflection of nouns and adjectives and begins the inflection of verbs. It includes written translation to and from Hebrew, oral exercises, and grammatical analysis of forms.

This course provides a thorough introduction to the grammar of the Aramaic portions of the Hebrew Bible during the first few weeks. The remainder of the course is spent reading texts from the books of Daniel and Ezra.