University of Chicago

Program
Center for Middle Eastern Studies

Degrees Offered
BA
MA (Middle East studies, Masters in Business Administration, Public Policy studies)
PhD

Middle East Languages
Arabic (all levels through Advanced, including Literary and Egyptian Colloquial)
Biblical, Medieval and Modern Hebrew (Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced)
Turkish (Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced, and Chaghatai, Ottoman, Turkman, Uzbek)
Persian (Elementary, Intermediate, Advanced, and Tajik)
Aramaic
Ugaritic
Urdu (Introductory, Intermediate, Advanced), Georgian

Courses
Anthropology
The Human Career
Cultural and Historical Ecology of Mesopotamia
Seminar: Ancient Irrigation Societies and Systems
Economic Anthropology
Arabic
Arabic Composition
Omayyad Poetry
Arabic Paleography and Epigraphy
Readings in Literary Criticism
Structure of Arabic
Arabic Grammatical Texts
Arabic Dialectology
Readings in the Maqamat
Readings in Modern Arabic
Pre-Islamic Poetry
Modern Arabic Poetry
Modern Arabic Short Story
Modern Arabic Novel
Readings in Risalah Literature
Abbasid Poetry
Alternative Forums in Arabic Poetry
Readings in Arabic Geographical Literature
Media Arabic
Judeo-Arabic
Hispano-Arabic Poetry
Al-Mutannabi
Arabic Manuscripts and the Art of Editing
Readings in Judaeo-Arabic Texts
Archaeology
Introduction to Mesopotamian Archaeology
Islamic Archaeology of Anatolia
Seminar: Problems in Anatolian Archaeology
Art History
Monuments of Islamic Art, 7th-17th Centuries
Byzantine Manuscript Illumination
Byzantine Monumental Painting, 9th-15th Centuries
Islamic Art and Architecture before the Mongol Conquest
Seminar: Mediterranean Art in Transition, 2nd-7th Century Iconographic Problems
Problems in Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Illumination
Seminar: Byzantine Manuscript Illumination
Seminar: Byzantine-Islamic Artistic Interrelations
Research in Byzantine Art
Research in Islamic Art
Word and Image in Islamic Literature and Art
Business
Politics and Interdependent Economics
Theories of Leadership
Geography
Design in Nature: Introduction to Physical Geography
Research in Resource Management
Readings in Geographical Literature in French
Readings in Cultural Geography
Seminar: The Origin of the City
Research in Cultural Geography
Research in the Origin of the City
Research in Comparative Urbanism
Research in Geography and Social Theory
Research in North Africa and Middle East
Hebrew
Readings in Post-Biblical Hebrew
Hebrew Letters and Inscriptions
Phoenician Inscriptions
Punic Inscriptions
Hebrew Commentaries on the Wisdom Literature
Hebrew Texts of the Bar-Kochba Period I, II
Historical Grammar of Hebrew and Aramaic I, II
Ugaritic: The Baal Cycle
Ugaritic: The Aqht Cycle
Ugaritic: Readings from Ugaritica V
Tannaitic Hebrew Texts I, II
Readings in Qumran Texts I, II
Hebrew Texts of the Tannaitic and Medieval Periods I, II
Seminar: Dead Sea Scrolls
History
The Western Islamic World: Formation to Christian Conquest
Decline of the Ancient World
The Eastern Roman Empire, AD 305-610
The Byzantine Empire, AD 610-1025
The Byzantine Empire, AD 1025-1453
Survey of Ottoman History
Seminar: Arab Nationalism
Introduction to the Study of Islamic History
Islamic Africa
African Economic History
Persian Paleography and Diplomacy
The Mongol World Empire
The Age of Timur
Iran in the 15th Century
Iran under the Safavids
Islamic Institutions
Persian Historiography
Reading and Research in Byzantine and Roman History
Reading and Research in Russo/Turkish History
Reading and Research in Iranian History
Seminar: Topics in Eurasian Economic History
Seminar: Topics in Eurasian Social History
Seminar: Ottoman Documents
The Ottoman World in the Age of Suleyman the Magnificent I, II
Ottoman Historical Writing
Readings in the Arabic Political Press
Russia, the Middle East and the West
Modern Middle Eastern History
Seminar: Modern History of Palestine
Byzantium and the Arabs
Tribal Society in the Fertile Crescent I, II
Introduction to Early Islamic History I, II, III
Muhammad and the Qur`an
Society and Politics under the Early Caliphate I, II
Early Arabic Historiography
Topics in Medieval Islamic Social History
Readings in Arab Historians
Orient Trade from Roman Times to 1800
Pre-Islamic Arabia
History of the Mamluks
Readings in Andalusian History
Arabic Literature and Islamic Thought
Intellectual Life in the 4th-10th Century
Readings in Umayyad History
Readings in Fatamid History
Readings in Abbasid History
History of the Islamic Middle East I, II, III
The Last Ottoman Century and the Rise of the Turkish Nation-State
Islamic Historians and Their Works: An Introduction to Islamic Historiography
Mesopotamian Historiography
Islamic Studies
Legend and Folktale in Islamic Literature (in translation)
Readings in Sira Literature
Islamic Theology
Islamic Political Thought
Islamic Philosophy
Islamic Mysticism (Sufism)
Islamic Law
The Qur'an
Readings in Qur'an Commentaries
The Classical Sources
Readings in Epistolary Political Prose
Feminisms and Islamisms
Sufism in South Asia
Law
Jurisprudence
International Law
International Law and Diplomacy: The Question of Palestine
International Law: Ethnic Conflicts
International Law: Regional Conflicts
Linguistics
Structure of Arabic
Problems in Semitic
Questions in Semitic Linguistics
Arabic Dialectology
Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics
Medieval Jewish Studies
Medieval Jewish History
Readings in Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature
Readings in Medieval Jewish Culture
Medieval Legal Documents
Sectarian Jewish Literature
Culture of the Jews of Medieval Palestine
Historical Chronicles of the Middle Ages
Medieval Philosophical Texts
Hebrew Historical Documents of the First Crusade
Medieval Travel Literature
Medieval Hebrew Poetry
Medieval Hebrew Commentaries
Hebrew Commentaries: Book of Job
Hebrew Commentaries: Pentateuch
Historical Genizah Documents
Medieval Grammarians
Seminar: Jews of Medieval Egypt
Paleography of Hebrew Manuscripts
Jews under Islam
The Sacred and Profane in Medieval Hebrew Poetry
Maimonides and His Islamic Environment
Jewish Women in Mediterranean Society: The Family I, II
Israeli Short Stories By Women Authors
Ignorance: Literacy in 19^th Century East-European Jewish Society
Music
Music in the Middle East
Persian
Introduction to Modern Tajik Language and Literature
Classical Persian Prose
Readings in the Shahnameh
Modern Persian Poetry I, II, III
Persian Poetry: Sa'di's Bustan
Persian Poetry: Samanid Period
Persian Poetry: Saljuq Period
Persian Poetry: Qajar Period
The Classical Persian Lyric I, II, III
Readings in Sa'di's Poetry and Prose
"Mirrors for Princes"
Readings in Sufi Prose
Classical Persian Language and Literature
Modern Persian Short Story
Modern Persian Fiction
Persian Poetry: Minor Genres
Persian Prose: Historical Texts
Political Science
Empire and Nation: Russia/Soviet Union 18th Century to present
The Nation and Its “Others;” Comparative Politics of the Middle East and North Africa
Power and Resistance
Membership and Citizenship
Social Sciences Introduction to Islamic Civilization I, II, III
African Civilization II
Turkish Readings in Ottoman Turkish
Reading Ottoman Poetry I
Readings in Ottoman Documents
Readings in Ottoman and Chaghatai Literary Texts
Seminar: Development of Literary Turkish in Pre-Chaghatai Central Asia
Elementary Azeri Turkish
Uzbek
Ottoman Diplomatics and Paleopathy
Urdu
Introduction to Urdu Literature in Translation
Sufism in South Asia
Non-Lyric Urdu Poetry
Ghalib
Urdu Dastan
Urdu Ghazal

Language and civilization courses are offered annually (3 quarters) other courses are offered as interest demands

Faculty
Anthropology
Nadia Abu El-Haj (Middle East)
Saba Mahmood (History of Religions)
Kathleen Morrison (Archaeology, Gender Studies)
Art
Robert S. Nelson (Byzantine period monumental art and manuscript illumination)
Business
Marvin Zonis (political economy and leadership)
Geography
Marvin Mikesell (culture and nationality, human impact on natural environment and history of ideas in geography)
History
Ralph Austen (African)
Cornell H. Fleischer (Islamic history)
Ronald Inden (Istory of India, Film Studies
Walter E. Kaegi, Jr (Byzantine)
Rashid Khalidi (modern Middle Eastern history, Arab nationalism, Arab-Israeli conflict)
John E. Woods (state formation and economic history in the pre-modern Islamic Middle East)
Salim Yaqub (International History, history of U.S. foreign relations, Modern Middle Eastern history, and 20th century U.S. political history, political art and caricature)
Law
Gidon Gottlieb (international law)
Linguistics
Gene Gragg ( Assyriology, comparative Semetics)
Carolyn G. Killean, Emerita (computer-assisted instruction, Arabic socio-linguistics, language pedagogy)
Music
Philip V. Bohlman (ethnomusicology)
Martin Stokes (Enthnomusicology, Turkish Music)
Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
Kagan Arik (Lecturer Uzbek & Trukic Studies)
Menachem Brinker (Modern Hebrew language and Literature, Israeli Politics, Zionism)
Richard Chambers, Emeritus, (Ottoman and Turkish history since 1700, Islamic urbanism, Ottoman diplomatic history)
Robert Dankoff (Ottoman literature, Turkology)
Nadav Daniel (Modern Hebrew Language)
Fred Donner (origins of Islam, tribal and nomadic society, early Islamic history, Arabic-Islamic historiography, Islamic law)
Ariela Finkelstein (Modern Hebrew Language)
McGuire Gibson (Mesopotamian archaeology, anthropological approaches to archaeology, ecology of the ancient Near East)
Norman Golb (history of the Jews, Judaeo-Arabic studies, Hebrew manuscript study [particularly Dead Sea scrolls and Cairo Genizah MSS])
Gene B. Gragg (Cushitic and Afroasiatic comparative linguistics, historical and computational linguistics, unaffiliated languages of the ancient Near East [Sumerian, Hurrian, Urartian])
Wadad Kadi (Islamic political thought, Islamic theology, Qur'an and Arabic literature, Islamic civilization in the 4th/10th century)
Mustapha Kamal (Arabic Literature, Arabic Grammar)
Joel Kraemer (Jewish culture and religion Islam)
Heshmat Moayyad (classical Persian literature, modern Persian literature, medieval Persian mystics, 19th-20th century Persian culture)
Farouk Mustafa (modern Arabic literature, modern Arab intellectual history, the arts in the Arab World, literary translations)
Hakan Ozoglu (Turkish Language)
Dennis Pardee (Northwest Semitic languages, Ugaritic/Hebrew poetics, Ugaritic/Hebrew epistolography, Ugaritic/Hebrew ritual)
John Perry (Persian linguistics and language history, cultural history of Iran and the Middle East)
Roshanak Shaeri-Eisenlohr (Persian Language)
Holly Shissler (Late Ottoman Turkish Republican history)
Ronald Suny (Russian and Central Asian politics and history)
Donald Whitcomb (Islamic Archaeology)
Aslihan Yener (Anatolian Archaeology)
Political Science
Lisa Wedeen
South Asian Languages and Civilizations
C. M. Naim (Urdu language and literature, and Islam in South Asia)

Degree Requirements
MA in Middle Eastern Studies: 6 quarters of a Middle Eastern language, 6 courses in area studies, 5 courses in relevant electives, 1 course in thesis preparation or reading/research, Master's thesis MA in Middle Eastern Studies and in Business Administration: 14 courses in the Graduate School of Business (7 courses in Concepts and Methods, 3 courses in Applications, 1 course in Policy Studies, 3 courses in Business electives), 13 courses in Middle Eastern Studies (6 quarters of a Middle Eastern language, 7 courses in area studies and relevant electives pertaining to Middle Eastern Studies), Master's thesis or other approved project (community survey, computer survey, etc.) MA in Middle Eastern Studies and in Public Policy Studies: 9 courses in Public Policy Studies, 6 quarters of a Middle Eastern language, 6 courses in area studies, 5 courses in relevant electives, 1 course in thesis preparation or reading/research, Master's thesis. The general program in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC) requires both MA and PhD candidates to: pass reading examinations in French and German before the end of scholastic residence, one before the end of the first year (required for the MA), the other before the end of the second (required for the PhD) -- exceptionally another language of scholarship may be substituted with Department approval; pass a Qualifying Examination by the end of scholastic residence, usually with language (primary and secondary) and civilization (history/archaeology) components. MA in NELC candidates must submit a thesis or two acceptable field papers to the Department within one calendar year following the completion of scholastic residence.

Director
John E. Woods

Associate Director
Farouk Mustafa

Scholarships/Graduate Support
University fellowships

Special Features
The Center for Middle Eastern Studies is interdisciplinary. It fosters research, holds seminars, provides library resources, and sponsors lectures and conferences. Lecture series are conducted both in English and in the languages of the Middle East. This latter program—known generally as the “language circles”—is unique, to our knowledge. Four separate lecture programs have been organized by the Center in Arabic, Turkish, Hebrew, and Persian. Lectures and discussions on important scholarly contemporary topics are held in each of the four languages and are attended by members of the University as well as by the community at large. The "language circles" not only serve the important function of giving our advanced language students an opportunity to use a language in scholarly discourse, but also act as a focus for communal organization on the part of persons indigenous to the four great language areas of the Middle East. Although the Center does not maintain a separate faculty, three MA degrees are granted through it, one in Middle Eastern Studies, and the others jointly with the Graduate School of Business, and the Committee on Public Policy Studies. BA and PhD degrees are disciplinary and requirements vary according to department.

Inquiries
Center for Middle Eastern Studies
The University of Chicago
5828 South University Avenue
Chicago IL 60637
773-702-8297
fax 773-702-2587
www.uchicago.edu

Last Updated: Wednesday, December 08, 2004