Winter

This course is an introduction to the religions of the ancient Middle East—Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, and Mesopotamia—with an emphasis on the variety to these religions and the ways regional religious expression and practice changed over time. We will read several famous myths, hymns, and other narrowly “religious” texts—including excerpts from the Akkadian creation myth Enūma eliš, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and a Hittite myth of a disappearing god. But we will also explore visual art and other material culture sources and we will read letters, treaties, and other more mundane texts to define how these sources differently show how religion manifested “on the ground.” The social and political resonances of religion will be stressed, with examples ranging from kings dubiously claiming the rediscovery of important religious texts to international theft of divine statues. We will discuss the influence of ancient Middle Eastern religions on that of neighboring regions, especially the Greco-Roman world. Students will pursue creative projects with the goal of more deeply understanding ancient Middle Eastern religions; these may include adapting a known religious phenomenon to a different medium or genre or even fabricating new texts, images, or practices while demonstrating their innovative benefits and historical connections to skeptical adherents.

The main objective of this sequence is to provide students with the skills necessary to approach modern Hebrew prose, both fiction and nonfiction. In order to achieve this task, students are provided with a systematic examination of the complete verb structure. Many syntactic structures are introduced (e.g., simple clauses, coordinate and compound sentences). At this level, students not only write and speak extensively but are also required to analyze grammatically and contextually all of material assigned.

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 Hakan Karateke's unpublished "Ottoman Reader" serves as a text book.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 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.

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.

The second quarter of a two-section course in which Elementary Kazakh and Elementary Uzbek will be offered as one class, with the option for students to study one or the other, or both simultaneously.

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 sequence covers the elements of Sumerian grammar, with reading exercises in Ur III, pre-Sargonic, and elementary literary texts.

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).

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.