This reading-, speaking-, and writing-intensive course explores the history of the discipline and engages students in ongoing historiographical debates in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. In addition to the emergence of "Oriental Studies" in Europe and North America, students will interrogate the historical connections between the field and other academic disciplines. Particular attention will be paid to the conceptions of time, history, and society, which have played an important role in research and writing on the Middle East. Each student is required to apply the critical approaches and concepts learned in this course to a final historiographical research paper that is directly related to her/his major field of inquiry.

This course examines current theoretical and methodological trends in the anthropological study of the Middle East. The readings will offer students ethnographic insight into the region, introduce them to current research, and acquaint them with the kinds of questions anthropologists ask (and the ones they fail to ask). Possible topics include (post)colonialism, nationalism, gender, violence, history/memory, the politics of archeology, mass mediations, neoliberalism, and questions of ethnographic authority. A central goal of the course is to enable students to think in new, creative, and critical ways about their own research projects.

This course serves as a foundation in the study of the medieval Middle East and early Islamic history, through an introduction to the field, key problems in historiography, and methodological debates in current scholarship. The period from late antiquity to the Mamluk era is considered, with a focus on the question of sources and the challenges they pose for modern scholars. Topics of interest include historical periodization, the potentials of non-Arabic sources on the rise of Islam, and the relationship between social, political, and intellectual history. The medieval Islamic historiographical tradition is surveyed across its various forms, with attention to critical considerations in the use of narrative sources. The relevance of material sources such as numismatics and archaeology, as well as documentary sources such as epigraphy, papyri, and archival material from the Genizah, are considered seriously. Students are also introduced to key reference works. This course is open to graduate students in all fields of medieval history, Middle East Studies, and Islamic Studies. No language prerequisite.

This course is designed for students with no prior knowledge of Arabic. It places equal emphasis on the development of all language skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking. The learning philosophy underlying this approach is that proficiency in a foreign language is best achieved through consistent, deliberate, and systematic practice. From the outset, students are strongly encouraged to develop the habit of consistently practicing learned material.

This course assumes active knowledge of the content covered in NMC2100Y. It places equal emphasis on the development of all language skills. As the course progresses, students are introduced to the fundamentals of Arabic morphology and syntax. This is achieved through analysis of texts covering a wide range of topics. By the end of the course, students are expected to achieve upper intermediate level of proficiency.

This course assumes active knowledge of the content covered in NMC2101Y. As the course progresses, students are introduced to increasingly complex morphological and syntactic patterns of Arabic. This is achieved through analysis of texts covering a wide range of genres. By the end of the course, students are expected to achieve advanced level of proficiency.

This course assumes active knowledge of the content covered in NMC2102Y. Its goal is to strengthen the students reading and writing skills, refine their knowledge of syntax and morphological patterns, and enrich their cultural background. This is achieved through analysis of sophisticated authentic texts covering a wide range of genres. In addition, Classical Arabic literary texts will be incrementally introduced. By the end of the course, students are expected to reach a superior level of proficiency.

One of the most complex figures in classical Arabic literature, al-Jahiz was a polymath who incorporated every field of intellectual inquiry into his own essayistic and compilatory literary form. He has been credited as a foundational prose stylist for the Arabic literary tradition, as well as the first contributor to Arabic literary theory and criticism. In this class, we will examine a variety of his works, from short epistles to excerpts of his longer works. Part of the analytic process will be to reconstruct the polemical context in which these works were written, and thus readings will be selected to illuminate his relationship to contemporary discourses, such as law, theology, Quran interpretation, logic, dialectic, and poetry.

The seminar will provide an introduction to medieval Arabic historical texts, especially chronicles and annalistic literature of the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. The seminar will be organized around readings from selected texts and discussions concerning the nature and organization of these histories and problems encountered in using them. Students will also be introduced to modern scholarship on the historiography of the period and to the ways in which chronicles and annalistic literature of this period have been used as historical sources.

An introduction to Islamicate codicology, this course centers around hands-on learning, drawing on the collections of the Fisher Library. Students will learn to write a codicological description of a manuscripts, while being exposed to debates in the field, reference sources, and the variety of research questions that can draw on the material aspects of manuscripts.

This class surveys the rich and varied literary prose tradition in the Arabic language from the Qur'ān to the Mamluk era. These works are frequently referenced in modern Arabic literature, in addition to being beautiful and intellectually challenging in their own right. We will read essayistic epistles, in addition to narrative works of a variety of genres, including biographical compilations, maqāmāt, anecdotes, histories, and fables. All texts are in the original Arabic.

The course focuses equally on developing reading skills and grammatical knowledge specific to classical Arabic texts, and on developing an ability to analyze the themes, literary techniques, generic features, and ideas within those texts.

In this class, we will read some of the most famous and frequently quoted poems of the pre-modern Arabic literary tradition, drawing from a wide variety of genres and periods. Readings include pre-Islamic poetry, Abu Nuwās, al-Buḥturī, al-Mutanabbī, and Ibn Nubāta, among others. All texts are in the original Arabic.

The course will introduce Arabic prosody, and allow students to develop skills in deciphering difficult verses using available reference material. Strong grammatical knowledge is presupposed. Class discussion focuses on poem structures, historical background, and close reading techniques.

This is a seminar on the hadith literature broadly defined, as well as its methodological challenges and potentials for the study of Islamic history. Debates on the status of traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad and other early authority figures played a formative role in classical Islamic thought, and have been no less significant if contentious in the modern academic study of Islam. This course explores the history of hadith as a discourse, its different forms and genres, its compilation and changing norms of transmission in the medieval period, and its various functions in law, ethics, theology, society, and culture. Readings in primary sources will include both canonical and apocryphal texts, representing the major and minor Muslim traditions. Through selected case studies on themes of interest, students will develop a command of the technical concepts and terminology in hadith studies, be able to review current debates in the field, and gain a critical understanding of the role of tradition in Islamic intellectual and social history.

A seminar on historiographies of the Arabic-speaking lands of the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-21st centuries.

A seminar focusing on the Arabic-speaking lands of the Middle East and North Africa, 18th-21st centuries, taking up issues and perspectives related to the instructor's research interests.

This course examines the role nineteenth and twentieth-century archaeology played in Middle Eastern politics, the culture of colonialism and in nationalist struggles. The course will first familiarize the students with the diplomatic and intellectual context of the formation of archaeology as a field of study in Europe and analyze the role archaeology played in the production of knowledge about the Middle East. Next, the course will examine the archaeological practices on the ground (and underground) and inquire what happens in the contact zone between European and American archaeologists on the one hand, and local practitioners on the other. Then we will trace the ways in which emergent nationalist discourse challenge, appropriate and imitate the historical narratives of Western archaeology. Finally, the course exposes the students to contemporary debates on cultural heritage in the context of large-scale destructions of archaeological sites in Syria and Iraq in particular.

This course is designed to critically re-examine both the role of intellectuals in the modern Arab world and the political events that shaped their thinking. Through readings of selections of their works (in Arabic and/or in translation) the course introduces some leading thinkers of the Arab renaissance and Muslim revival of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Literary circles and social networks of intellectuals will be examined to shed light on the constitution and socialization of different groups of intellectuals in the late Ottoman and colonial periods. Topics will include secularism, Islamic revival, liberalism, nationalism, gender, cosmopolitanism, and anti-colonialism. Seminar discussions will focus on intellectuals as prisms through which political events and social structures of the modern Middle East are analyzed. Written assignments will be based on interpretations of Arabic texts (English translation optional): autobiographies, novels, essays, newspaper articles, speeches, poems, or lyrics.

This seminar explores competing conceptions of Iranian modernity within a comparative historical framework on "multiple modernities." While interrogating the modernity debate, it explores themes of the development and transformation of public and private spheres, imaginings of the national body and the body social, the themes of secularism and Islamism, rational and religious subjectivities, sexuality and gender, history and memory, revolution and national refashioning, universality and peculiarity, archotopia and heterotopia, and Self and the Other in Iran. A major theme is the exploration of the temporality and historicity in discussions of Iranian modernity. Each student in this course is expected to write a publishable research paper that addresses a significant aspect of Iranian modernity.

This course is for students who have minimal or no prior knowledge of Persian focusing on reading, writing and conversation. Students start by learning how to write and pronounce the sound and alphabet, how to connect letters to form basic vocabulary in Persian in order to express basic ideas orally and in writing; then develops students' language comprehension through expanding their vocabulary and grammar. By the end of the course, students' skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in Persian improves and they should be able to read, write, and translate sentences in Persian at an intermediate level.

This course is an intermediate/advance level of Persian language for students who passed NMC2200Y or demonstrate commensurate Persian skills. The course continues to develop students' Persian language knowledge by focusing on more complex readings, writings, grammatical structures, translation, audio/visual, and conversational activities such as group discussion, language games, movie, music, dialogue, and playing role at an advanced level. By the end of this course, students enable to reach the intermediate high/advance level of proficiency in Persian. The course also serves as preparation for courses on classical and contemporary Persian literature.

Survey of Persian literature, mainly modern poetry from 19th-21st centuries focusing on linguistics and literary approaches in modern poetry. The course includes detailed discussion of the influence and effect of western and world poetry on Iranian poets, and critical reflections on works of leading contemporary poets including Nima, Yushij, Ahmad, Shamlu, Forugh, Farrokhzad, Sohrab Sepehri, Mehdi Akhavan Sales.

This interdisciplinary course focuses on the structural development of the Persian language from Old Persian (551 BC) to Modern Persian (7th century) with the emphasis on the word formation and grammar. The course consists of two main parts: The first part focuses on an overview of the Old Persian and Middle Persian languages, their linguistic features and writing system and the factors that changed Old Persian to Middle and then Modern Persian. The second part of the course concentrates on the structural analysis of Iranian languages including Dari, Tajiki, Balochi, Kurdish, Pashto …. The lecture is based on texts and articles written by theoretical linguists, historians, sociolinguists, descriptive, and historical linguists. This course also examines the role of language in maintaining cultural identity and shows the type and the mechanism of the development of Iranian languages in general and of Persian in particular.

This course surveys the grammar and syntax of the language of the Young Avestan corpus, belonging to the Old Iranian linguistic group. The Avesta was a compendium of Zoroastrian texts composed orally in northern Iran and Central Asia in two dialects spoken in different periods: Old Avestan (2nd millennium BCE) and Young Avestan (1st millennium BCE). Most foundational texts of Zoroastrianism were composed in Young Avestan language, which attests a more simplified grammar than Old Avestan and in this regard is closer to Old Persian. Knowledge of Young Avestan provides access to the mythical and ritual context of pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia. Students will be introduced to the main phonological, morphological, and syntactical features of the Young Avestan language; its script; its most important texts; and its connections with Old Persian and Middle Persian, or Pahlavi.

An introduction to the grammar and syntax of Middle Persian, or Pahlavi, language; the special script it was written in; and the connections of Pahlavi to Old Persian and New Persian languages. Knowledge of Pahlavi provides access to the most important Zoroastrian religious texts, and the epic and wisdom literature composed during the period of the Sasanian empire (3rd–7th centuries CE) and early Islamic Iran (8th–10th centuries CE). Students will read excerpts, in the original Pahlavi, from such works as Arda Wiraz Namag (Book of the Righteous Wiraz, describing his journey to heaven and hell), Karnamag i Ardakhshir i Pabagan (Chronicle of Ardakhshir, Son of Pabag, narrating the deeds of the first Sasanian king), and Bundahishn (Primordial Creation, on Zoroastrian cosmology).

This course will survey the language, main epigraphical texts, historical context, and political ideology of the Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE). The Old Persian version of the famous inscriptions of Darius I in Bisotun will be read in the original, cuneiform script, linguistically analyzed, commented, and translated into English. By this training, students will be able to comfortably read the entire inscriptional corpus in Old Persian. By the end of the year, they will have acquired a strong understanding of the simplified Old Persian cuneiform script, the main phonological, morphological and syntactical features of the Old Persian language, and its connections with the Middle and modern Persian languages.

This course is designed for students who have already completed NMC2201Y or have an equivalent level of proficiency in Persian. This course aims to develop students' abilities at an advanced level, with a focus on complex reading materials including historical, socio-political, media, and journalistic texts. Students will improve their reading comprehension, strengthen writing skills, and advance speaking and listening skills through class discussions and oral presentations.

This course is designed for students who have already completed NMC2201Y or have an equivalent level of proficiency in Persian. Its goal is to strengthen the students reading and writing skills and enrich their cultural and literary background. This is achieved through analysis of sophisticated authentic literary texts covering a wide range of literary genres