Near Eastern Studies
- ART 398/CLA 398/NES 398: Ancient Egyptian Funerary CultureTomb monuments built for the highest status members of ancient Egyptian society comprise one of the most important sources of information on ancient Egyptian civilization. In this course, we will examine many aspects of elite funerary culture, centering the built stone tombs filled with images and texts, while incorporating as well other forms of religious texts, stelae, statuary, and coffins. We will consider questions of ancient Egyptian religious beliefs and conceptions of the afterlife, the role of ritual practices, the changing relationship between high elite officials and the king, and multiple aspects of ancient social identities.
- HUM 247/NES 247: Near Eastern Humanities I: From Antiquity to IslamThis course focuses on the Near East from antiquity to the early centuries of Islam, introducing the most important works of literature, politics, ethics, aesthetics, religion, and science from the region. We ask how, why, and to what ends the Near East sustained such a long period of high humanistic achievement, from Pharaonic Egypt to Islamic Iran, which in turn formed the basis of the high culture of the following millennium.
- NES 201/HIS 223: Introduction to the Middle EastA sweep through Middle Eastern history, globally contextualized. Weeks 1-6 treat the rise of Islam, the Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, 19th-century reforms, European imperialism, and incipient globalization in the region. Weeks 7-12 focus on state-society relations, political ideologies, and foreign actors in the 20th and 21st centuries. You will come away with a basic grasp of the region's past and present and its mix of idiosyncrasies and global links.
- NES 269/POL 353: The Politics of Modern IslamThis course examines the political dimensions of Islam. This will involve a study of the nature of Islamic political theory, the relationship between the religious and political establishments, the characteristics of an Islamic state, the radicalization of Sunni and Shi'i thought, and the compatibility of Islam and the nation-state, democracy, and constitutionalism, among other topics. Students will be introduced to the complex and polemical phenomenon of political Islam. The examples will be drawn mainly, though not exclusively, from cases and writings from the Middle East.
- NES 300: Seminar in Research MethodsIntroduces NES majors to the sources, tools, and methods used in Near Eastern Studies, and to central questions and debates that have informed the region's study in varying disciplines (history, comparative literature, religious studies, political science, and anthropology). Also covers the nuts and bolts of academic research and writing: how to design a research project, find and make sense of relevant primary and secondary sources, develop an argument, and write a compelling scholarly paper. Includes guest lectures.
- NES 347/GSS 386: Islamic Family LawThis course examines the oulines of Islamic family law in gender issues, sexual ethics, family structure, family planning, marriage and divorce, parenthood, child guardianship and custody, etc. The course starts with a general survey of Islamic legal system: its history and developments, structure and spirit, and the attempts of the Muslim jurists to come to terms with the challenge of time.
- NES 365/POL 368: Modern IranWhy is Iran so often in the headlines? Why is what happens in Iran matters so much to the rest of the world? In this course, we try to find some answers to questions about Iranian politics, culture, recent history and society. The class covers Iran's long twentieth century, from the rise of the constitutional revolution to the Islamic revolution of 1979 and its aftermath.
- NES 369/HIS 251/JDS 351: The World of the Cairo GenizaThe Cairo Geniza is a cache of texts from an Egyptian synagogue that include letters, lists and legal deeds from before 1500, when most Jews lived in the Islamic world. These are some of the best-documented people in pre-modern history and among the most mobile, crossing the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean to trade, study, apprentice and marry. Data science, neural network-based handwritten text recognition and other computational methods are now helping make sense of the texts on a large scale. Students will contribute to an evolving state of knowledge and gain an insider's view of what we can and can't know in premodern history.
- NES 374/GSS 343: Global Feminisms: Feminist Movements in the Middle East and BeyondThis course explores how feminist thought & activism circulates globally by examining a variety of feminist movements in the Middle East & North Africa. Beginning with modern feminist thought and activism in mid-19th century Syria & Egypt, we'll trace feminist movements in various contemporary contexts, from Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon & Egypt in the 20th century, to women's participation in the Arab Spring and transnational Islamic movements in the 21st century. We'll map the local and geopolitical discourses that have shaped regional feminisms, and ask how local feminisms are transnational or global.
- NES 385: Jihadism in the Modern Middle East and EuropeThis course provides a detailed survey of the key jihadi groups and ideologies that have taken form in the Middle East since the 1970s. From the Iranian revolution to 9/11, and from Hezbollah to ISIS, it introduces jihadism, including pre-modern Islamic theology and law and the ways in which these have been appropriated and repurposed by jihadi ideologues for political ends. The course also shows how jihadis disseminate their ideas (e.g. journals, pamphlets, books, cassette tapes and CDs, poetry, chants, satellite television shows, online videos, and social media) and considers Sunni and Shi'i jihadi movements.
- NES 387/MED 387: The Nature of Reality in Classical Arabic LiteratureThis course looks at a variety of canonical texts and genres from the Classical Arabic literary heritage and examines them through the question of "truth" and "representation." In a culture that is often said to frown upon fictional writing, we will explore attitudes towards language as a means of gaining knowledge about the world, on the one hand, and as a way to depict "reality," on the other. The texts we will be reading range from pre-Islamic poetry to 13th century shadow plays and cover a wide range of topics, including philosophy, mysticism, and historiography. Readings will be in English. No prerequisites.
- NES 391/ANT 391: SecularismThis course introduces students to classic and recent theoretical debates about secularism and secularization. We will consider a range of historical-ethnographic examples, focusing particularly on the limits of secularism in its modern encounter with Islam and Muslim communities in North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. By comparing the realities of everyday life in a variety of national contexts, we will ask what secularism offers as a human way of experiencing the world, a mode of legitimating norms and constructing authority, and a method of telling stories and creating myths about human values and historical progress.
- NES 433/HIS 433/HLS 434: Imperialism and Reform in the Middle East and the BalkansThe major Near Eastern diplomatic crises and the main developments in internal Near Eastern history. The focus will be upon the possible connections between diplomatic crises and the process of modernization. Oral reports and a short paper.
- NES 500: Introduction to the Professional Study of the Near EastA colloquium primarily intended to introduce graduate students to major scholarly trends and debates in the various disciplines and methodologies of Middle East and Islamic Studies.
- NES 502/MED 502: An Introduction to the Islamic Scholarly TraditionThe course offers a hands-on introduction to such basic genres of medieval scholarship as biography, history, tradition, and Koranic exegesis, taught through the intensive reading of texts, mostly in Arabic. The syllabus varies according to the interests of the students and the instructor.
- NES 504: Introduction to Ottoman TurkishAn introduction to the writing system and grammar of Ottoman Turkish through close reading of graded selections taken from school books, newspapers, short stories, and travelogues printed in the late Ottoman and early Republican era.
- NES 528: Persian Historiography from the Mongols to the QajarsThis course is designed to introduce advanced students of Persian to later Classical Persian prose from the Mongol conquests of the thirteenth century down to the middle of the nineteenth century, when significant innovations were introduced into Persian literary style. Over the course of the semester, students gain familiarity with texts composed in Iran, India, and Central Asia in a variety of literary genres including history, biography, hagiography, and travelogues. Each week's classes consist of excerpted readings from primary sources along with secondary sources related to the readings.
- NES 555: Themes in Islamic Law and JurisprudenceSelected 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.
- NES 557: Introduction to Arabic ManuscriptsHands-on introduction to Arabic manuscripts and their material history via Princeton's Garrett Collection of Middle Eastern manuscripts, the largest such collection in North America. Covers the anatomy of the medieval Arabic book, including codicology, supports, scripts, ink, ownership notes, certificates of audition and other paratextual information; and the social history of the book, including reading and transmission, libraries, the modern book trade, and the ethics and legality of the transfer cultural patrimony. Good classical Arabic is a prerequisite; prior experience with manuscripts and paleography is neither expected nor assumed.
- NES 561: Studies in Modern Arab History: Readings in Islamic Revivalism, Islamist Politics and LawThis course aims to survey a variety of historical and religious texts in Arabic. Students must have mastery of advanced Arabic. Some of the texts that will be studied have been edited and published, others remain in manuscript form.
- NES 569/COM 575: Classical Arabic PoetryIntroduces students to the major Arabic poets and poems from pre-Islamic times to the Mamluks. Goals: Increase the ease with which students read classical Arabic poetry, learn how to scan Arabic meters, and expand knowledge of styles, genres and development. Students prepare assigned poems and put together brief biographical sketch of poets.
- NES 573: Problems in Late Ottoman HistoryA study of a number of central problems, historiographical issues, and primary sources relevant to the history of the late Ottoman Empire. Topics vary from year to year.
- REL 236/NES 236: Introduction to IslamThis course is an introduction to Islam survey for undergraduates. The course is framed in terms of Muslims' self-understanding and includes pre-modern, modern, and contemporary sources. It begins in pre-Islamic Arabia and ends with contemporary material. We will use a variety of media, including art, music, and film to emphasize the varieties of Muslim experience and explore the contestations and adaptations of what it means to be Muslim.