Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Studies showed how critiques of capitalism were based on a provincial account of western history. Postcolonial studies was based on analysis of places that were directly colonized, usually India. What are the essential elements of postcolonial theory? What are the grounds of its many critiques and what are implications for our own research problems? Readings will draw on social theory, political economy, postcolonial studies, novels, history of the Middle East, and ethnography and are appropriate for students of any region or discipline.

We tend to think of borders as hard lines on a map, yet in the ancient world things rarely operated so clearly. Borders instead formed regions of uncertain control, with their own authorities adept at playing both sides. This was especially true in the Classical and Late Antique Middle East, contested by the empires of Rome and Iran. This seminar explores the visual world of the ancient frontier (including sites such as Hatra, Palmyra, and Dura Europos) and examines the unique forms of cultural expression possible in these contested places, as well as their importance in forging an international visual language of prestige and sacrality.

This course offers an introduction to Akkadian, the language of ancient Babylon. The first half of the course introduces students to the basic concepts of Akkadian (old Babylonian) grammar and the cuneiform script. In the second half students consolidate their knowledge of the language by reading selections from classic Babylonian texts, such as the famous law code of King Hammurabi and the Epic of Gilgamesh.

An introduction to the history of the Middle East from the late eighteenth century through the turn of the twenty-first, with an emphasis on the Arab East, Iran, Israel, and Turkey.

History of Slavery in Africa and the Middle East focuses on the experiences of enslaved individuals and the powerful social, legal, and political regimes that attempted to define their subjection. Attention will be concentrated on the themes of race, gender, class, and diaspora to examine how these histories both differ from and are informed by histories of slavery globally. This course will analyze the relationship between abolitionist discourses and imperialism, underpinning the ongoing transition from slavery to freedom. Students will engage with literature to understand how historical production has distorted and silenced enslaved lives.

HUM 248 will introduce students to the multi-faceted literary and cultural production of a region that at one point stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus Valley. Starting at the tail end of the Abbasid Empire up to the rise of nation-states in the 20th century, students will learn of the different power dynamics that shaped the region's diverse ethnic, religious, linguistic, and ultimately national communities, and their worldviews. Readings will include literary works written originally in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew.

There have been people who have hated Jews qua Jews for over two thousand years. Prejudice against Jews is often called humanity's "oldest hatred," and yet it has taken many different forms over the millennia. Using a historical-critical approach, we will trace Jew-hatred chronologically and across vast territories and cultures. We will consider anti-Jewish prejudice in both Christian and Islamic lands, in the west and the east. Over the course of the semester, students will study texts regarded as scripture, works of philosophy, legal texts, historical narratives, polemics, and screeds.

How did the introduction of new text technologies impact premodern culture? What motivated or delayed the adoption of the codex or the various types of print? Did these technologies encourage new practices or suppress old ones? And how does the story change when we turn from European to Near Eastern contexts? By learning about past text technologies, we'll gain a fuller understanding of how today's digital text technologies leave their mark on how we interact with texts and with the world. This course teaches relevant digital humanities methods for texts and reflects critically on both our current moment and premodern pasts.

This course investigates the historical roles of arms production and use in shaping militarization in Palestine/Israel, from the late Ottoman Empire and British rule to the present day. What made various historical actors at different points in time decide to use arms or object to their use? How and to what extent did the materiality of arms - their production, dissemination, design, or operation - influence these choices? Using archival documents, films, poetry, fiction, and art, we will explore such questions and examine how militarization has profoundly shaped the subjectivities of those affected by it across different times and contexts.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine sparked the greatest crisis since the Cold War and has put Eurasia again at the center of global politics. This course examines the evolution of American foreign policy toward Eurasia from 1991 onward. It seeks to identify the factors that have driven American policy, placing theoretical perspectives that emphasize geopolitical and balance-of-power considerations alongside those that focus on domestic politics and regime type. What are American objectives in Eurasia and how have they evolved? What roles do ideas, institutions, and individuals play in the formulation and execution of foreign policy?

Overview of the issues surrounding global energy supplies, oil's unique physical and economic properties, and its role in shaping the political economy of the Middle East and U.S. strategic interests in the region. Discuss availability of energy sources, the state of technology, the functioning of energy markets, the challenges of coping with global climate change and the key role of the oil reserves in the Middle East. Then focus on the history of oil and gas in the Middle East and its impact on societies in the region.

The theme is premodern Arabic biographical literature, with readings from a wide range of tabaqat works.

An introduction to Ottoman paleography and diplomatics. The documents are in divani and rika scripts.

This course trains graduate students to work directly with documents from the Cairo Geniza, one of the largest and most varied documentary corpora to have survived from the pre-Ottoman Middle East. Students learn to find and decipher published and unpublished Geniza documents relevant to their research interests and become familiar with a range of tools for interpreting them as historical evidence. Arabic proficiency is required.

The aim of the course is to provide the linguistic skills and the academic tools that are necessary to carry out research in Syriac Studies. The first session deals with the transcription of Syriac and presents an overview of the basic resources for academic research. The rest of the course centers on a selection of Syriac texts and addresses fundamental notions of literature, culture, and history.

This course surveys the history of the north and south Caucasus. It begins with an overview of the region's geography, peoples, and religions. It then examines in more detail the history of the Caucasus from the Russian conquest to the present day. Topics covered include ethnic and religious coexistence and conflict, imperial rule, imagery and identity, the formation of national identities, Sovietization, energy, and democratization and its discontents.

Palestine and Israel Studies is/are among the most deeply contentious fields of research within Middle Eastern Studies, corresponding to the polarized politics that the field studies. In this course, we choose a topic at the heart of these fields and study the scholarship about it and analyze the relevant primary sources.

Selected topics in Islamic law and jurisprudence. The topics vary from year to year, but the course normally includes reading of fatwas and selected Islamic legal texts in Arabic.

This course provides an overview of politics in the Middle East. We explore whether and how a variety of factors such as religion, oil, and foreign intervention have contributed to the persistence of authoritarianism in the region. Topics include the politics of redistrbiution, gender, protest, voting, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Western stereotypes often equate Islam with violence. The goal of this course is to dismantle stereotypes and to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the Islamic ethics of war and peace, in theory and in practice. How have Muslim thinkers, past and present, debated the laws of war? What has warfare meant for ordinary people? What does "jihad" mean? Can a war be just? What have been the results of the so-called "war on terror"? We explore these questions and others through primary sources in translation (including poetry and novels), modern scholarship, and films. An optional trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art is included.

This course engages certain major trends, debates, and questions that populate the field of Islamic Studies today, broadly defined. A central objective of this course is to think carefully about ways in which anthropological and other theoretical perspectives currently operative in the field might enrich more textually oriented approaches to the study of Islam, and vice versa. In addition, this course allows students to explore the question of how their particular research projects fit into and intervene in the broader landscape of Religious Studies and Islamic Studies.