Winter

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.

This course will examine the development of the Turkish state following WWI including questions of economy, institutions, and identity formation. The first quarter make be taken as a free-standing colloquium, or students may take both quarters and produce a research paper.

This course offers an overview of the history of Mesopotamia from its origins down to the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods, when Mesopotamia became part of larger empires. Weeks 1 to 5, preceding mid-term exam, cover the periods ranging from the late Chalcolithic down to the end of the Middle Bronze age (late fifth to mid-second millennia BCE). Weeks 6 to 10 study the developments of the Late Bronze and Iron Ages, from the period of the archives of El-Amarna in the fourteenth century BCE down to the time of Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BCE.

This two-quarter seminar focuses on the transformation of the Muslim Ottoman principality into an imperial entity--after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453--that laid claim to inheritance of Alexandrine, Roman/Byzantine, Mongol/Chinggisid, and Islamic models of Old World Empire at the dawn of the early modern era. Special attention is paid to the transformation of Ottoman imperialism in the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver (1520-1566), who appeared to give the Empire its “classical” form. Topics include: the Mongol legacy; the reformulation of the relationship between political and religious institutions; mysticism and the creation of divine kingship; Muslim-Christian competition (with special reference to Spain and Italy) and the formation of early modernity; the articulation of bureaucratized hierarchy; and comparison of Muslim Ottoman, Iranian Safavid, and Christian European imperialisms. The first quarter comprises a chronological overview of major themes in Ottoman history, 1300-1600; the second quarter is divided between the examination of particular themes in comparative perspective (for example, the dissolution and recreation of religious institutions in Islamdom and Christendom) and student presentations of research for the seminar paper. In addition to seminar papers, students will be required to give an oral presentation on a designated primary or secondary source in the course of the seminar.

Television is one of the major media phenomena of the 20th and 21st centuries. Television had a significant part in the building of the modern nation-state and is, nowadays, one of the main manifestations of global capitalism. The Israeli television market went from one public channel, dominated by the government, to become a leading exporter of television content to the Western World. During the semester we will review the political history of global and Israeli TV, we will learn to distinguish between different TV genres such as soap opera, sitcom, "reality" TV and quality drama series. We will explain how the growth of various creative products and different genres reflected both the political and economic zeitgeist. Likewise, we will focus on how the unique characteristics of the Israeli television market brought about its international success. We will focus on the narratives of Israeli successful drama series such as Fauda (a series about an under-cover IDF unit aired on Netflix), In treatment (a psychological drama which was aired on HBO) and Homeland (an Israeli action format aired on Show-time) and try to explain their global success. We will also focus on how the various political minorities in Israel are represented on television and the political and social impact of their representation. In addition, we will discuss concepts such as "quality" and "trash" TV as concepts reflecting social, political and economic struggles. We will also discuss the changes which the digital era is bringing about and its impact on television at large and television in Israel.

In consultation with a faculty research adviser and with consent of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, students devote the equivalent of a one-quarter course to the preparation of their Research Project. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Please indicate that you wish to register for NEHC 29995 Section 01 with the Director of Undergraduate Studies.