Graduate

Elementary Turkish (First Year)

In this course, we will read the Sumerian mythological narrative known by its modern title “Dumuzi’s Dream.” Judging by the numerous manuscripts preserved from the Old Babylonian period, it was a popular text in scribal education. We will practice reading from copies, photos, and original cuneiform tablets, as five manuscripts are housed at the ISAC Museum and available for hands-on study. Based on close engagement with the individual manuscripts, we will discuss the principles of textual criticism and how to prepare an eclectic text, as well as a text edition. Besides philological issues, we will also address broader questions during classroom discussions, such as: Can we use such literary texts to reconstruct Sumerian mythology? How does this text relate to other literary compositions revolving around the divine couple Innana and Dumuzi, and how does it relate to non-literary text corpora? In how far can we determine its function, both within scribal education and beyond? Can we actually apply the term ‘literature’ to the Sumerian textual legacy?

Elementary Sumerian II

Translating poetry is often a challenging endeavor, but translating Persian classical poetry is especially complex for several reasons, including the genre’s prevalence of ebhām (ambiguity) and ihām (polyvalence). These challenges have caused many literary translators to dub Hafez’s poetry as practically untranslatable, yet nonetheless there have been many attempts at translation, with varying degrees of success. This course aims to both explore the specific challenges translators of Hafez have encountered and also to strengthen students’ literary translation skill through the translation of Hafez’s works.

This sequence deepens and expands the students' knowledge of modern Persian. The goal is to enable the students to gain proficiency in all skills of language acquisition at a higher level. In this sequence, the students learn more complex grammatical structures and gain wider vocabulary through reading paragraph-length texts on a variety of topics related to Persian language, literature, and culture. Students will also be familiarized with Persian news and media terminology. Class meets four hours a week with the instructor and one hour with a native informant who conducts grammatical drills and Persian conversation.

This sequence concentrates on all skills of language acquisition (reading, writing, listening, and speaking). The class begins with the Persian alphabet, and moves to words, phrases, short sentences, and finally short paragraphs. The goal is to enable the students towards the end of the sequence to read, understand, and translate simple texts in modern standard Persian and engage in short everyday conversations. All the basic grammatical structures are covered in this sequence. Introducing the Iranian culture through the texts is also a goal. The class meets four hours a week with the instructor and one hour with a native informant who conducts grammatical drills and Persian conversation.

Further Topics in Late Ottoman History-2

Anthropological/Ethnographic Survey of Pre-Modern Central Asian Cultures. This course explores the rituals, oral literature, and music associated with the nomadic cultures of Central Eurasia.

This course is an exploration of conflict in the Arab world through literature, film and new media. In this course, we will discuss the influence of independence movements, wars, and revolts on Arabic literature: how do writers write about, or film, conflict? How does conflict affect language itself? How do these texts engage with issues of trauma and bearing witness? To answer these questions, we will look at a number of key moments of conflict in the Arab world, including the Arab-Israeli conflicts, the Algerian war of independence, the 2011 Egyptian revolution, the Lebanese and Iraq wars, and the ongoing war in Syria. Rather than follow a historical chronology of these events, we will read these texts thematically, beginning with texts that seek to present themselves as direct, sometimes eye-witness, accounts and then moving on to narratives that complicate the relationship between conflict and its narration.

This course covers the period from ca. 1700 to the present. It explores Muslim intellectuals’ engagement with tradition and modernity in the realms of religion, politics, literature, and law. We discuss debates concerning the role of religion in a modern society, perceptions of Europe and European influence, the challenges of maintaining religious and cultural authenticity, and Muslim views of nation-states and nationalism in the Middle East. We also give consideration to the modern developments of transnational jihadism and the Arab Spring. This course sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.