Spring

This seminar explores the city-state system that arose in the eastern Mediterranean at the beginning of the Iron Age, ca. 1200 B.C.E. Most commonly referred to as “Syro-Hittite,” these kingdoms thrived for roughly 500 years until their piecemeal destruction at the hands of the Assyrian Empire. We will examine models for how this city-state system arose following the collapse of the Late Bronze Age political economy, how statehood and social identity were enacted during the centuries of their greatest cultural expressions, and how and why their political structure and cultural patterns came to an end. Our sources will be contemporary inscriptions and the archaeological record of the region. Other topics will include religious practices, military history, and interregional connections with the Assyrian Empire, the Aegean, and Israel/Judah.

This course will survey the archaeological record of ancient Anatolia (modern Turkey) from the start of the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period (ca. 9500 BCE) to the end of the Iron Age (ca. 550 BCE). The material will cover a selection of significant archaeological sites designed to illustrate the diversity of cultures in Anatolia and to demonstrate broader regional patterns and themes. The presentation of sites will be accompanied by readings and discussions on the interpretation of archaeological data.

The course is aiming to enable students to reach a reasonable level of proficiency in the Armenian language. The curriculum is heavily based on real life situations. Each class session includes a healthy balance of real-life like conversations (shopping, placing an order in a restaurant, asking directions, talking with natives, getting around in the city, banking, etc.), readings (dialogues, jokes, stories, news, etc.) and writings (essays on selected topics, filling forms, etc.). The students can also communicate in Armenian well beyond basic needs about the daily life and obtain some level of fluency in their professional interests. This sequence covers a wider-range vocabulary and more complex grammatical structures in modern formal and colloquial Armenian. Reading assignments also include a selection of simple original Armenian literature.
A considerable amount of historical-political and social-cultural issues about Armenia are skillfully built into the course for students who have intention to conduct research in Armenian Studies or related fields, or to pursue work in Armenia.

This three-quarter sequence focuses on the acquisition of basic speaking, listening, reading and writing skills in modern formal and spoken Armenian. The course utilizes the most advanced computer technology and audio-visual aids enabling students to master the alphabet, a core vocabulary, and some basic grammatical structures in order to communicate their basic survivor’s needs in Armenian, understand simple texts and to achieve a minimal level of proficiency in modern formal and spoken Armenian.
A considerable amount of historical-political and social-cultural issues about Armenia are skillfully built into the course for students who have intention to conduct research in Armenian Studies or related fields, to visit or to pursue work in Armenia. A language competency exam is offered at the end of spring quarter for those taking this course as college language requirement.

This sequence features proficiency-based instruction emphasizing speaking and writing skills as well as reading and listening comprehension at the intermediate to advanced levels in modern Turkish. Modern short stories, novel excerpts, academic and journalistic articles form the basis for an introduction to modern Turkish literature. Cultural units consisting of films and web-based materials are also used extensively in this course, which is designed to bring the intermediate speaker to an advanced level of proficiency.

A selection of Turkish printed texts in Arabic script from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is introduced in order of difficulty. Hakan Karateke's unpublished "Ottoman Reader" serves as a text book. The texts are drawn from historical textbooks, official documents, novels, and other genres.

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 is an exploration of the cultural patterns in the Levant from the late Byzantine period down to modern times, a span of some 1500 years. While the subject matter will be archaeological sites of this period in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Israel, the focus will be on the role of medieval archaeology in amplifying the history of economic and social systems. It is this connective quality of Islamic archaeology which contributes to an understanding of the earlier history and archaeology of this region.

Continuation of Ugaritic I-II, epigraphy and grammar, readings open

Continuation of Intermediate Classical Hebrew I and II, including strengthening skills in grammar, emphasis on syntax; continuation of study of Biblical Hebrew poetry, selections from prophets; introduction to reading from an original Massoretic text; introduction to reading from the Dead Sea Scrolls, biblical manuscripts; continuation of introduction to historical grammar