2024-2025

Students will supervise work in one or more trenches, possibly (depending on suitability and project scale) an excavation area comprised of several trenches, including managing the local workforce and any junior students, and developing strategies together with the project leader. They should also be the lead on one type of material culture or data collected, managing the team responsible for recording, measuring, sampling, etc., and interpreting and synthesizing preliminary results in the field. Assessment will be based on field notes, area summary, and contribution to any preliminary reports or articles.

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor

Persian short story writing began in the twentieth century with Mohammad-Ali Jamalzadeh’s collection Yek-ī būd yek-ī nabūd (1921). The 1920s through the 1940s is considered the formative period of Persian short-story writing, also known as the first period. The second period in the development of the modern Persian short story began with the coup of 28 Mordād 1332/19 August 1953 and ended with the 1979 revolution. The third period that started after the 1979 revolution has been called the period of diversity in that it brought forth a variety of literary movements.

In this course, we will review the three periods of Persian short story development mentioned above to give you historical background on this genre of Persian literature. However, the focus of readings in this course is the short stories written by Hedayat, Daneshvar, Pirzad, Golshiri, Esma’ili, and others who have employed elements of fantasy, surrealism, and the paranormal in their stories. The class meets twice per week, each time for an hour and a half. We will read the original stories in Persian and discuss them in class in Persian. We will use hypothesis as a social annotation tool to engage you more deeply with the readings through a collaborative discovery of the text. We will also do collaborate translations of selected sections of some stories in our course blog as well as composing commentaries on each story. At the end of the course, each student will write a critical paper about one of the short stories we read during the course and translate 4-5 pages of it. Try to implement the theories you learned in your other courses in your discussions of the story. 

This course introduces the grammar and writing system of the Lycian language of the first millennium BC (ca. 500 to 300). After reading a series of tomb inscriptions, we venture into the larger historical inscriptions that include the Lycian-Greek-Aramaic trilingual of Xanthos.

This course focuses on the Hieroglyphic and Cuneiform Luwian inscriptions of the second millennium BC. Since Hieroglyphic Luwian I (AANL 20301) is a prerequisite, this course will only offer a very brief grammatical refresher, and will immediately start with the texts. We will read the large 13th century hieroglyphic texts of Tudhaliya IV and a few Cuneiform Luwian rituals from the 15th and 14th century.

Festivals celebrating deities and therapeutic rituals using magic to heal both mental and physical problems in individuals and groups of people belong to the most prolific genres of Hittite literature. This class will give an introduction to the festival and ritual genres, and discuss their place in Hittite literature and society. Following this we will read a number of representative texts in the original language and script (cuneiform). Requirements: Elementary Hittite 1-3.

This is the third in a three-quarter sequence that covers the basic grammar and cuneiform writing system of the Hittite language. It also familiarizes the student with the field’s tools (i.e., dictionaries, lexica, sign list). Readings come from all periods of Hittite history (1650 to 1180 B.C.).

As part of a three-quarter sequence, this second quarter we finish the grammar and start reading Hittite texts, introducing the student to the various genres that Hittite literature has to offer. We will continue the introduction of important tools of the field and students will acquire further routine in reading cuneiform.

As part of a three quarter sequence, this course familiarizes the student with about 3/4 of Hittite grammar. The principles of the cuneiform writing system are taught and the student will learn some 100 signs of the basic syllabary and most important logograms. Also, a begin is made of introducing the student to the basic tools of the field.

This course is the second quarter of the annual introductory sequence to the Babylonian language and the Cuneiform script. Students will further explore the grammar of Babylonian in its Old Babylonian dialect (19th-16th c. BCE) and read ancient inscriptions (especially the Laws of Hammu-rabi) in the Old Babylonian monumental script. They will also be introduced to the Old Babylonian cursive used in letters and the documents of everyday life.

This course is the third quarter of the annual introductory sequence to the Babylonian language and the Cuneiform script. After covering the grammar in the first two quarters, students will further their mastering of the Classical and Late Old Babylonian dialect of Akkadian and the associated monumental and cursive scripts by reading through a varieties of text genres: Letters, Royal Inscriptions, Legal Texts, and excerpts of Literature.