Graduate

This course covers the period from ca. 1750 to the present, focusing on Western military, economic, and ideological encroachment; the impact of such ideas as nationalism and liberalism; efforts at reform in the Islamic states; the emergence of the "modern" Middle East after World War I; the struggle for liberation from Western colonial and imperial control; the Middle Eastern states in the cold war era; and local and regional conflicts.

This course is designed for graduate or upper-level undergraduate students interested in the social history of the Mediterranean, late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early modernity. We will have survey and explore the history of urban classes, guilds, religious communities, waqf and urbanism, everyday life, disasters and celebrations in “Islamic” cities. The course will begin by examining the primary sources on the subject. We will also cover a growing corpus of secondary sources on life in Islamic cities. Among the questions we will ask are what are the forces of growth and decline of Islamic cities, what groups and classes of people lived in cities, what did cityscapes look like and what kinds of businesses and concerns occupied people’s daily lives.

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.

This course surveys the archaeology and history of the Levant from the end of the Bronze Age around 1100 BCE to the Roman conquest of the region in 64-63 BCE.

This course will critically analyse past human sensory experiences, based in case studies of ancient Mesopotamia from the 5th through 1st millennia BCE. These case studies will vary in scale from portable material culture through vast natural landscapes. The case studies will include the effects of materials, objects and both built and natural spaces on vision, smell, touch, hearing and taste. Building on this traditional five-sense framework, we will also aim to reconstruct and analyse synaesthetic experiences (multi-sensory or combined senses) and will further explore the more enigmatic senses of fear or awe, of comfort, and of place and belonging. We will engage both empirical analyses and socio-cultural perspectives via synthesis of practical data and critical reading of ancient texts (in translation). The aims of the course are to expand students’ interpretive toolkit and to encourage thinking about archaeological data from the ground up (rather than top down), via lived experiences and sensual and emotional perceptions.

This course provides undergraduate and graduate students with an introduction to the use of animal bones in archaeological research. Students will gain hands-on experience analyzing faunal remains from an archaeological site in the Near East. The class will address theoretical and methodological issues involved in the use of animal bones as a source of information about prehistoric societies. The course consists of lectures, laboratory sessions, and original research projects using collections of animal bone from archaeological excavations in southeast Turkey. Topics covered include: 1) identifying, ageing and sexing animal bones; 2) zooarchaeological sampling, measurement, quantification, and problems of taphonomy; 3) analysis of animal bone data; 4) reconstructing prehistoric hunting and pastoral economies, especially: animal domestication, hunting strategies, herding systems, seasonality, and pastoral production in complex societies.

Reading and Research

This course assumes that students have full mastery of the grammatical and lexical content of the advanced level. The main objective is literary fluency. By the end of the course, students should have an excellent command of Hebrew. The course concentrates on the written language, especially scientific writing, as well as elements of Biblical Hebrew, literature from earlier periods and sophisticated journalistic writing. Students read the various Israeli daily newspapers as well as Israeli literature, scientific articles and legal documents (with the help of a dictionary) of varying lengths. They have a good command of synonyms and idiomatic Hebrew, and also understand the subtle differences between words. Their already substantial vocabularies now include many words from a wide variety of genres. Students considerably improve their ability to write long essays in Hebrew on a wide range of topics, incorporating idiomatic language.

This course assumes that students have full mastery of the grammatical and lexical content of the intermediate level (second year Hebrew or the placement exam are prerequisites). The main objective is literary fluency. The texts used in this course include both academic prose, as well as literature. Students are exposed to semantics and morphology in addition to advanced grammar. Requirements include a weekly class presentation, regular essay writing, two take-home exams, and several quizzes per quarter.

The course, which builds upon Introductory Modern Hebrew (first year HEB) focuses on the acquisition of proficiency and communicative skills in Modern Hebrew.