Autumn

TURK 30101 Advanced Modern Turkish

Advanced Turkish students will develop their language skills in speaking, reading, translating, listening, and writing, while learning about Turkish society and culture at the same time. To address all of these aspects each class is divided into three sections which focuses on a specific skill.
Section one is the conversation part: it involves reading (or listening to) short (audio) pieces or phrases on a given topic; section two is reading and translation: students read and prepare pieces from Turkish literature, literature readings are short stories or selected parts from novels; section three is the listening part: by watching parts of a Turkish movie, students' skills in listening and understanding will get faster while we progress through the movie.
Prerequisites

TURK 20103

Bahadin H. Kerborani
2025-2026 Autumn

ARAB 20112 Arabic for Academic Reading

Prerequisites

3 years of Arabic or equivalent

Noha Forster
2025-2026 Autumn

NEHC 20012 Ancient Empires II: The Ottoman Empire

(CLCV 25800, HIST 15603, MDVL 20012, SOSC 20012)
The Ottomans ruled in Anatolia, the Middle East, South East Europe and North Africa for over six hundred years. The objective of this course is to understand the society and culture of this bygone Empire whose legacy continues, in one way or another, in some twenty-five contemporary successor states from the Balkans to the Arabian Peninsula. The course is designed as an introduction to the Ottoman World with a focus on the cultural history of the Ottoman society. It explores identities and mentalities, customs and rituals, status of minorities, mystical orders and religious establishments, literacy and the use of the public sphere.
Prerequisites

Taking these courses in sequence is not required. This sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies

Theo Knights
2025-2026 Autumn

NEAA 20330 Archaeological Theory

Since the formalization of the discipline of archaeology in the 19th century, how we make sense of the past through its material traces has undergone a number of profound transformations. This class introduces students to the diverse array of theoretical approaches archaeologists have deployed in their interpretations of ancient cultures. In the process, students will gain an appreciation for the field's close relationship to developments in neighboring fields in the humanities and social sciences. The ultimate goal is for students to realize the incredibly wide range of interpretive modes archaeologists have operated under, both historically over the past century and a half as well as in current practice.
James Osborne
2025-2026 Autumn

NEHC 20340/30832 Late Ottoman History I

This course is the first in  two-quarter sequence resulting in a research paper. The first quarter may be taken as a free-standing colloquium. We will examine a variety of important themes in late Ottoman history such as institutional reform, family reform, the development of consultative structures, taxation, capitulations, and nationalism.
Prerequisites

Reading knowledge of a Middle Eastern language, a language of the Ottoman Empire, or French. First quarter open to undergrads by permission. Second quarter open to grad students only. 

Holly Shissler
2025-2026 Autumn

NEHC 20340/30340 The Eastern Question, 1806 - 1914

The course will examine history of European Great Power competition as it related to the Ottoman Empire. It will particularly focus on European perceptions of the Ottoman Empire as weak and on the ambitions of various European states to fill a possible power vacuum arising therefrom. It will also examine the role of emerging national sentiment among Ottoman subjects, especially in the Balkans, and the interaction of these with the “Eastern Question.” This course is open to both graduate and undergraduate students.
Holly Shissler
2025-2026 Autumn

EGPT 30446 Ptolemaic Hieroglyphs

This advanced course examines grammar, scripts, and texts typically called "Ptolemaic," but employed in formal, priestly inscriptions of both the Ptolemaic and Roman eras. Texts to be examined include, among others, synod decrees and inscriptions from Dendera, Philae, Edfu, and Esna.
Prerequisites

2 years of Egyptian

Foy Scalf
2025-2026 Autumn

AKKD 20605/30605 Intermediate Akkadian: Ishtar's Descent to the Netherworld

The Babylonian literary text known as Ishtar’s Descent to the Netherworld offers one of the most detailed accounts about Mesopotamian conceptions of the afterlife. Throughout this course, we will read the composition together and explore various aspects of it, including but not limited to the gods of the underworld, the role of humanity in life and death, and the relationship of this Babylonian composition with earlier Sumerian works of literature. In addition to gaining experience with the Standard Babylonian dialect, participants will enhance their knowledge of the cuneiform writing system and reinforce their grammatical knowledge of Akkadian. This course will also provide a review of essential resources for Assyriological research and help prepare students for advanced Akkadian courses.
Prerequisites

The successful completion of the Introduction to Babylonian course sequence (or equivalent)

Nik Gill
2025-2026 Autumn

EGPT 10101 Introduction to Middle Egyptian I

(ANCM 30500)
This course and its sequel EGPT 10102 provide an introduction to the hieroglyphic writing system, vocabulary and grammar of Middle Egyptian, the 'classic' phase of the Egyptian language developed during the Middle Kingdom (circa 2025-1773 BCE) and used until the disappearance of hieroglyphs over two thousand years later.
Brian Muhs
2025-2026 Autumn

NEAA 20146/30146 Death, Burial, and Afterlives in Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia

The treatment of the dead in past cultures provides insights into how communities engaged with religious beliefs and cosmology and how they conceptualised identity among the living. This seminar examines death, funerary practices, and beliefs in the afterlife from a cross-cultural perspective, based in the ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Within each of these cultures, the rituals and format of burials and beliefs about ‘life’ after death varied widely. Most archaeological focus on burials in these cultures has been on the dead as the primary data, and many studies reflect simplistically on the economic cost of burials, rather than the effect of death on the living, the family or the socio-political structure. But there are hints in the archaeological and textual record at the response and responsibilities of those burying the dead. This seminar will use archaeological data, artworks and textual materials (in translation) to examine the diversity of responses to death in two important literate cultures. The seminars will foster engagement with theoretical approaches, varied methodologies, and two extremely rich datasets.
Prerequisites

Undergraduate students should have taken at least one course in the archaeology or history of Egypt or Mesopotamia

Augusta McMahon, Anna-Latifa Mourad-Cizek
2025-2026 Autumn
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