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NMC Newly Offered Courses for Fall/Winter 2024-25
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200 level course
The Prophet Muhammad became a focal point of the Islamic tradition. This course covers the development of this relationship with Muhammad, through various forms of expressions, from poetic to religious to artistic. Various emotional rubrics were given to the relationship to Muhammad: from honoring him, to emulating him to loving him. The course covers the theological debates about the status of Muhammad (his nature, his relationship to God, his powers to intercede). The course includes the Sufi movement relationship to Muhammad and culminates in the study of the poetic corpus that Muslims call madih.
Money can be a source of power, a way of building and affirming relationships, and a means of demonstrating a person's values and commitments. In this course, we will explore women's social roles, power, vulnerabilities, choices, fears, and desires by examining how they gained and spent their money. We will be looking at the experiences of royal women and enslaved women; Muslims, Christians, and Jews; conservative and rebellious; married and single; those who worked within the home, and those who worked outside of it. The course is centered primarily on texts originally written in Arabic between the 9th and 14th centuries, but all sources will be offered in English translation.
Monuments like the Great Pyramid of Giza or the incredible temple at Karnak are some of the defining elements of Pharaonic civilization. This course will introduce students to ancient Egyptian architecture and trace its development from the Predynastic through the New Kingdom. Using textual, archaeological, and pictorial evidence, this course will investigate the emergence of mudbrick and stone architecture, how the construction of pyramids and other monuments was organized, and changes in tomb and temple construction over time.
The course examines both the scientific and social history of medicine in the medieval Middle East. We will examine the history of Arabic medicine and its relation to Greek and Sanskrit traditions of medicine and pharmacology. We will also look at “Prophetic medicine,” medical magic, pilgrimage healing sites, and folk practices, and how they interacted with the so-called “medicine of the physicians.” We will consider how doctors from different religious groups perceived each other and were perceived by their patients, and how desperation for healing made people willing to cross social boundaries and seek out help from people of different religions, ethnicities, and genders. We will also examine the lives of some of the great physicians of medieval history.
300 level course
This course introduces students to the archaeology of ancient Nubia. For far too long, Nubia’s rich archaeological past has been overlooked or interpreted through the lens of Egyptian sources. This course seeks to understand the archaeological past of the Nubian Nile Valley (and deserts) on its own terms. This course will proceed chronologically from the Neolithic through to the end of the Napatan period. Beyond learning about the development of Nubian archaeological cultures, this seminar will also introduce students to some of the most dynamic current scholarly debates in this vibrant field.
This dynamic Turkish language course aims to enhance students’ proficiency through Turkish television series which have gained significant international popularity in recent years and through Turkish films from both classical and modern “Yeşilçam”, the Turkish cinema industry. The course will also familiarize the students with the use of the Turkish language in traditional and social media. By the end of the course, students will have improved their receptive, expressive, and interactional skills in spoken and written modalities.
400 level course
Borders impact all kinds of aspects of our daily lives, and the same was true for peoples in the ancient Near East. This course will analyze premodern societies from the perspective of these boundaries, from “natural” geographic boundaries to the strict registers of action that define the aesthetics of Pharaonic and Near Eastern art. Using cutting edge theoretical approaches developed by anthropologists, geographers, art historians, and archaeologists to study modern (and ancient) border-making, this course will investigate Pharaonic and Near Eastern societies through the prism of the political, cultural, administrative, and economic boundaries they created and maintained.
NMC Topic Courses for Fall/Winter 2024-25
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Topics in Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
This course aims to introduce students to the history of knowledge and science in ancient Egypt. In addition to providing an overview of topics such as zoology, botany, astronomy, calendars, and mathematics that are recognizable in modern science, the class also considers magic, divination, and alchemy as part of the ancient scientific curriculum. The class offers an overview of the various areas of ancient Egyptian knowledge from the third millennium BCE to the first millennium CE, drawing primarily on Egyptian evidence, including both written sources and material culture. Materials from contemporary neighbouring cultures will also be taken into account as comparanda. The focus of the course is on the interpretation and reconstruction of ancient practices and theories based on original sources (in translation) using a modern methodological approach, combining perspectives from philology, archaeology, and the history of science. One of the main aims of the class is to make students aware of the importance of culture and society in interpreting and understanding ancient cultures of science and knowledge and the practices associated with them.
This course explores the diverse array of myths, legends, and beliefs that have shaped Turkic cultures from pre-Islamic times to their conversion to Islam beginning in the 10th century. We will study the eclectic nature of Turkic mythology, examining how ancient shamanistic practices and Islamic beliefs have intertwined to influence Turkic societies' spiritual, cultural, and societal norms. Through a comprehensive study of oral traditions, literary sources, and historical texts, students will gain insight into the continuity and transformation of Turkic mythological themes across centuries.
This co-taught survey course explores the lives and societal roles of women in various cultures of the ancient, medieval, and modern Near and Middle East. It includes evidence from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Zoroastrianism and early Christianity, and early, medieval, and modern Islam. By tracing continuities and differences across regions, religions, and cultures, as well as changes over time, the course, which is co-taught by six specialists in different fields, seeks to enhance students’ understanding of women’s history and gender by exposing them to a variety of evidence and methodological approaches. The course addresses more theoretical topics, such as the limitations and/or biases of the sources, the question of their authorship and reception, and the usefulness and limitations of intercultural comparisons. It also looks at evidence for the social and economic standing of women, and issues of sexuality, childbearing, and motherhood in the cultures under study.
The course provides an overview of medicine and medical practices from ancient Egypt between the 3rd millennium BCE to first millennium CE, primarily drawing on Egyptian evidence. Materials from neighbouring cultures are also included for comparative reasons. The focus of the class is on interpreting and reconstructing ancient healing practices and theories based on original sources (in translation) through a modern methodological approach, combining perspectives from both the humanities and the medical sciences. Both written and material sources are examined and discussed. One of the main objectives of the module is to make students aware of the importance of culture in interpreting ancient medicine.
Advanced Topics in Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations
This course is a survey of the military history of the Islamic world from the rise of Islam to the zenith of the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. Throughout this course we will examine several themes such as: the adoption and amalgamation of different military traditions, practices, and strategies in the Muslim world; multiculturalism and its social/cultural/religious effects in the militaries and societies of the Muslim World; the significance of the different groups that provided the soldiers of the armies; the paradox of military slavery and the formation of a slave elite in several Muslim polities; the transfer of technologies; warfare and gender roles; religious and secular ideologies of warfare.