Winter

This course covers the period from ca. 1100 to 1750, including the arrival of the Steppe Peoples (Turks and Mongols), the Mongol successor states, and the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria. We also study the foundation of the great Islamic regional empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Moghuls.

Is Islam a religion or a political ideology? What is sharīʿa and what is sharīʿa law? What do Muslims mean when they use terms like sharīʿa, fiqh and Islamic law? Does Islamic law represent a challenge to the authority of the nation-state? In this course, we will examine all of these issues and more.In this course, we will approach Islamic law from three main angles, jurisprudence, substantive law, and the judiciary. The substantive areas of Islamic law to be covered include the following: ritual worship, family and personal status law, criminal law, contract law, constitutional & international law. We will also be dealing with the challenges posed by the advent of modernity and colonialism to Muslims' understanding and practice of Islamic law. The course will combine readings in primary and secondary literature with case studies to illustrate the workings of Islamic law. The main textbooks will be Wael Hallaq's Introduction to Islamic Law and Knut Vikor's Between God and the Sultan: A History of Islamic Law. Supplemental readings will be provided from other works. Students will be required to write three 3-4 page response papers, take a midterm and a final exam. The final exam will comprise take home essay questions.

This two-quarter seminar is offered as part of an ongoing collaborative research project called “Coping with Changing Climates in Early Antiquity: Comparative Approaches Between Empiricism and Theory,” developped jointly at the University of Chicago, the University of Michigan and Purdue University. Using a shared syllabus at the three institutions, and some joint sessions in the form of webinars, the seminar will cover the theoretical framework that allows for an in-depth understanding of the relations between human societies and their environments, and on social response to change in their social, political and environmental climates (Winter quarter); it will present a series of case studies in three key geographic areas: Egypt and Nubia; the Eastern Mediterranean and Anatolia; and Mesopotamia (Spring quarter). Students will be exposed to cross-cultural approaches and will be able to interact with partners at other institutions through an online discussion group. Students will have the opportunity to work collaboratively (2-3 students) within their institution and across institutions on a research project of their choice, whose results will be presented at a poster session during the project's final conference in 2020, and will then be exhibited at the three partner institutions in the course of Academic Year 2020-2021.

This course gives an overview over the richness of Mesopotamian Literature (modern Iraq) written in the 3rd-1st millennium BC. We will read myths and epics written on clay tablets in Sumerian and Akkadian language in English translation and discuss content and style, but also the religious, cultural and historic implications. Special focus will be on the development of stories over time, historical context of the literature and mythological figures. The texts treated cover not only the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, but also various legends of Sumerian and Akkadian kings, stories about Creation and World Order, and destruction. The topics covered range from the quest for immortality, epic heros and monsters, sexuality and love.

This sequence introduces three great empires of the ancient world. Each course in the sequence focuses on one empire, with attention to the similarities and differences among the empires being considered. By exploring the rich legacy of documents and monuments that these empires produced, students are introduced to ways of understanding imperialism and its cultural and societal effects—both on the imperial elites and on those they conquered.

This course introduces students to the figure of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and his enormously influential contributions to philosophy, theology, Sufism, and law. In addition to reading his writings, we examine al-Ghazali's reception in secondary scholarship and the various roles attributed to him – extinguisher of reason, proponent of double truth, architect of a grand synthesis. Open to undergraduates with sufficient Arabic and instructor permission.

In this course we will read widely in the archaeological, historical, and sociological literature pertaining to ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern households, kinship, and demography, with attention to methodological issues involved in interpreting relevant archaeological and textual evidence.

This is the general introduction to Egyptian Archaeology which is part of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East sequence.
This course will examine in detail the archaeology of ancient Egypt. The aim is to give a detailed overview of major sites and discoveries as well as including as much as possible material from recent excavations. Additionally, problems and priorities concerning fieldwork in Egypt will be discussed throughout this course.

This is a two-course sequence that introduces students to theory and method in landscape studies and the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to analyze archaeological, anthropological, historical, and environmental data. Course one covers the theoretical and methodological background necessary to understand spatial approaches to landscape and the fundamentals of using ESRI's ArcGIS software, and further guides students in developing a research proposal. Course two covers more advanced GIS-based analysis (using vector, raster, and satellite remote sensing data) and guides students in carrying out their own spatial research project. In both courses, techniques are introduced through the discussion of case studies (focused on the archaeology of the Middle East) and through demonstration of software skills. During supervised laboratory times, the various techniques and analyses covered will be applied to sample archaeological data and also to data from a region/topic chosen by the student.

Second Quarter of Elementary Modern Kazakh.