Spring

This is the third in a three-quarter sequence that covers the basic grammar and cuneiform writing system of the Hittite language. It also familiarizes the student with the field's tools (i.e., dictionaries, lexica, sign list). Readings come from all periods of Hittite history (1650 to 1180 B.C.).

Third quarter of Advanced Turkish / Elementary Ottoman

Third Quarter of Intermediate Modern Turkish.

An introductory sequence in the written language of the Orkhon Inscriptions, dating back to the fifth-to-eighth-century Kök Türk State of Central Eurasia, and of related inscriptions from the Yenisei River area, Mongolia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. The language of the inscriptions is considered to be the ancestor of the majority of Turkic languages spoken today and uses a distinctive alphabet sometimes known as the Old Turkic Runiform Alphabet. The sequence covers a brief historic overview, basic grammar, reading selections from the inscriptions in the original and in translation, and familiarization with the alphabet itself. An introductory sequence in the written language of the Orkhon Inscriptions, dating back to the fifth-to-eighth-century Kök Türk State of Central Eurasia, and of related inscriptions from the Yenisei River area, Mongolia, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. The language of the inscriptions is considered to be the ancestor of the majority of Turkic languages spoken today and uses a distinctive alphabet sometimes known as the Old Turkic Runiform Alphabet. The sequence covers a brief historic overview, basic grammar, reading selections from the inscriptions in the original and in translation, and familiarization with the alphabet itself.

Third Quarter of 1st Year Modern Turkish

This course is intended for those students who have learned Persian well enough to start enjoying Persian poetry in the original language. Starting from the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, each session several new poems by one or more poets will be discussed against the socio-political background of the time. The poets will include some women poets also, and the poems range in form, style and subject matter from traditional to modern, from satirical to prison poems and issues of human/women’s rights. The students are expected to prepare for each session, participate actively in discussions, be ready for short presentations based on the assigned secondary literature, and write an essay.

This sequence deepens and expands the students' knowledge of modern Persian at all levels of reading, writing and speaking. Grammar will be taught at a higher level and a wider vocabulary will enable the students to read stories, articles and poetry and be introduced to examples of classical literature towards the end of the sequence. Introducing the Iranian culture will be continued. Class meets three hours a week with the instructor and (with enough students) two hours with a native informant who conducts grammatical drills and Persian conversation.

This sequence concentrates on modern written Persian as well as modern colloquial usage. Towards the end of the sequence the students will be able to read, write and speak Persian at an elementary level. Introducing the Iranian culture is also a goal. The class meets three hours a week with the instructor and two hours with a native informant who conducts grammatical drills and Persian conversation

This course takes gender as a critical analytical tool in the study of the late Ottoman and early Turkish republican Armenian history. It offers a close reading of a range of original Armenian texts in English translation (mostly from the manuscript of Feminism in Armenian: An Interpretive Anthology by Melissa Bilal and Lerna Ekmekçioğlu, forthcoming 2019). These texts are primary sources in the form of literary works and political essays written by Armenian women in their native Ottoman capital and in its diaspora. They document a century of Armenian feminist thinking and activism. They provide us with precious resources to examine the ways in which Armenian women of the period defined and tackled feminism, equality, womanhood, manhood, freedom, justice, solidarity, awakening, enlightenment, modernity, progress, power, oppression, society, nation, community, state, homeland, and related concepts. The course situates their fight for emancipation both as Armenians and as women within the global beginnings of women’s liberation cause. It also historicizes women’s writings within the contemporary Armenian social, political, and intellectual life and the late Ottoman and early republican politics of sex and ethnic/national/racial difference. Throughout the term, we will be contextualizing women’s responses and interventions to the patriarchal family, moral double standards regulating female sexuality, male dominance in communal decision-making bodies, and the overall politics of modern Armenian nationhood. Secondary sources will help us better frame Armenian women’s 2 interventions to the public opinion and discourses on the relationship between the sexes and between communities in periods of social change and transformation. They will also enable us raise critical questions about gender and production of knowledge, about historical consciousness, and about politics of memory. We will situate the history of Armenian feminism within the scholarship on feminist historiography of the Ottoman Empire and the Republic of Turkey and will address the formative silences in historical narratives.

The focus of this class is on the social and political history of Central Eurasia from the end of the Timurid era to the present day, and will consider themes such as gender, ethnicity, religion, nation-building, nationalism, modernity discourse, language, and literature. Central Eurasia as a region is notoriously difficult to define, but in this course the geographic focus will span regions, which today comprise Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, the former Soviet Republics, and will touch upon neighboring areas, including Anatolia, Iran, Siberia, and India. As a course developed to engage students with the historiographical themes within a specific regional context, we will be able to analyze the historical and cultural developments of a region crucial to Islamic history. There is no prerequisite to enroll in this course.