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.
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.
This course looks at Sumerian Literary Texts.
The Shahnameh, the Persian "Book of Kings," is generally classed as an epic or national epic. While it does not lack for battling champions and heroic saga, it also includes episodes in a variety of disparate genres and themes: creation narrative, mythology, folk tale, romance, royal chronicle, and political history.
In this course we gain familiarity with the style and language of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh by slow reading and discussion of select episodes in Persian, in tandem with a reading of the whole text in English translation. We approach the work as a foundational text of Iranian identity,; compendium of pre-Islamic mythology and lore; a centrifugal axis of Persianate civilization and Iranian monarchical tradition throughout Anatolia, Central Asia and South Asia; and as an instance of "world literature." We will read with an eye toward literary structure; genre; Indo-Iranian mythology; political theory and commentary; character psychology; ideals of masculinity, femininity and heroism; the interaction of text, oral tradition, illustration, scholarship, and translation in the shaping of the literary reception of the Shahnameh; and, of course, the meaning(s) of the work. We also address wider issues of textual scholarship: the sources of the Shahnameh, the scribal transmission of Ferdowsi’s text, and the production of modern critical editions and theories of textual editing.
Class discussions will be in English, though we will read together in class a limited selection of episodes in the Persian. The aim is to gain deep understanding of the language, the characters and the themes of the Shahnameh, as well as the philological skills necessary to read medieval Persian poetry.
PERS 30320; 2 years of Persian or the equivalent.
This course looks at Poetry and Politics in Modern Iran.
The goal of this sequence is to enable the students to gain proficiency in all skills of language acquisition at a higher level. The student learns more complex grammatical structures, and gradually other levels of language (colloquial, literary) are introduced. Texts include selected articles, stories, and poetry (classical and modern).
PERS 20102-II
This sequence emphasizes all skills of language acquisition (reading, writing, listening, speaking). The goal is to enable the student towards the end of the sequence to read, understand, and translate simple texts in modern standard Persian and engage in short everyday dialogs. All the basic grammatical structures are covered.
PERS 10102
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 th¬e 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.
This course provides the student with an introduction to the major authors and various genres of
Syriac literature, including chronicles and historical texts, hagiography, biblical
commentary, and letters/responsa. Following this introduction, selected portions of several
Syriac texts will be read in English translation and discussed in class. A brief (6-10 pages)
paper and class presentation will be required (topic subject to the approval of the
instructor). There will also be a final exam.
This course explores the rituals, oral literature, and music associated with the nomadic cultures of Central Eurasia.
