The first quarter of a two-section course in which Elementary Kazakh and Elementary Uzbek will be offered as one class, with the option for students to study one or the other, or both simultaneously.
This sequence features proficiency-based instruction emphasizing grammar in modern Turkish. This sequence consists of reading and listening comprehension, as well as grammar exercises and basic writing in Turkish. Modern stories and contemporary articles are read at the end of the courses.
First readings in texts in the Ugaritic language (1250-1185BC).
Second-year standing and one year of Classical Hebrew
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.
Media are increasingly integrated into contemporary life. As in the past, we consume media—watching movies and television, listening to music and podcasts, and following influencers on social media. However, these passive activities now overlap with media production, participation, and commentary. For Muslims negotiating identity in diverse global society, media figure into representation and self-representation in complex, often subtle, ways. Intersecting with the family, mosque, community, and other core social institutions, media play a central role in contemporary Muslim experience. This class will examine religious media, i.e. those branded as “Islamic” in some fashion, such as television programs on Islamic law, or social media content with explicit religious commitments and claims to authority. It will also consider how Islam has been represented in popular culture, and the ways Muslims have related to those constructions of their faith. However, this dichotomy of religious and popular media no longer holds with Muslim-oriented television shows like Ramy, Ms. Marvel, the integration of Islam into popular American entertainment from Jack Ryan to Mr. Robot, and the complex engagement with religion in media across the historically Muslim world.
This Seminar for graduate students centers on the use of material and documentary sources for the study of early Islamic history (ca. 640-1000 CE), particularly looking at multiple religious groups, languages, and literary traditions. It will introduce the students to the study of documentary texts such as the Arabic papyri, the expansion of Arabic papyrology as a field, and the integration of literary and non-literary sources. Students will be encouraged and challenged to think of texts also as material objects. We will talk about sources and resources for the study of political, economic, social, and intellectual histories of the Islamicate world; in so doing, we will discuss also methods, problems, and perspectives.
This course is an introduction to the history and the study of early Islamicate societies, from the rise of Islam in late antiquity to the early Abbasid period (ca. 600-950 CE), considering various religious and social groups. We will look at the same historical arc from multiple perspectives: political events, such as the Muslim conquests and the rise of ruling dynasties, but also other factors that impacted people’s lives in the early centuries of Islamic rule—the environment they inhabited and transformed, documents they created, social institutions, and economic activities. What broad developments characterized the early Islamic period? Who brought those changes about? And how are they studied today?
The building of sculpted monuments and monumental architecture seems to be a universal human trait in all parts of the world, from the pyramids of ancient Egypt to the inuksuit cairns of the arctic Inuit. What explains our urge to create monumental things? Why are monuments built, and how do we experience them? This course explores various answers to these questions through the disciplines that most frequently address monuments: archaeology, architecture, and art history. In the process, we will encounter a number of the major theoretical trends that have characterized the humanities and social sciences in the past century. This course examines humankind’s monumental record through a series of famous case studies from around the world to investigate the social significance of monuments in their original ancient or modern contexts. We will also determine whether lessons learned from the past can be applied to the study of monuments today, and whether studying modern monuments--including those from our immediate surroundings in Chicago--can help us understand those of the past.
Course introduces students to the historical context and specific characteristics of the mass printed press (newspapers, cultural and political journals, etc.) in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th C. We will investigate issues such as content, censorship, production, readership and distribution through secondary reading and the examination of period publications.
Prior knowledge of the Middle East not required. This course aims to facilitate a general understanding of some key factors that have shaped life in this region, with primary emphasis on modern conditions and their background, and to provide exposure to some of the region's rich cultural diversity. This course can serve as a basis for the further study of the history, politics, and civilizations of the Middle East.
