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Middle East

2019 Mar 26

Celebrate Nowruz

5:30pm to 7:00pm

Location: 

Harvard Semitic Museum, 3rd Floor

On March 26, 2019, the Alwaleed Program co-sponsored a celebration of Nowruz, the Persian New Year that takes place on the day of the spring equinox and is celebrated throughout the Persianate world, most of which consists of Muslim-majority countries. 

The event featured a vibrant haft sin table that displayed seven items beginning with the letter sin that symbolize concepts such as abundance, prosperity and new life to usher in the new year. Over 200 guests also enjoyed fresh fruit and Iranian sweets alongside live performances...

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2019 Mar 28

Seminar: City and Countryside as Understood in Medieval Arabic-Persian Dictionaries

3:00pm to 4:30pm

Location: 

CMES, Room 102

On March 28, 2019, Harvard's own Professor Roy Mottahedeh, Gurney Research Professor of History, presented his new philological research on terms for city and countryside in medieval Arabic-Persian dictionaries for the Alwaleed bin Talal Seminar in Islamic Studies. This lecture was co-sponsored and hosted by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 

Watch the video: 

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2019 Feb 25

Middle East Beyond Borders Session II

6:00pm to 7:30pm

Location: 

Kresge Room (114) of the Barker Center

Speaker: Jenny Peruski (PhD Student, History of Art & Architecture)

Paper: "Sensuous Scripts: A Vocabulary of Islamic Calligraphy beyond the Middle East"

 

The MEBB workshop meets 6:00pm - 7:30pm at the Kresge Room (114) of the Barker Center (Dinner is served). We circulate papers one week before their workshop session. 

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2019 Feb 11

Middle East Beyond Borders Session I

6:00pm to 7:30pm

Location: 

Kresge Room (114) of the Barker Center

Speaker: Youssef Ben Ismail (PhD Student, NELC)
Dissertation chapter: "Tunus Meselesi: The "Tunisian question" in imperial context (1881-1923)"

The MEBB workshop meets 6:00pm - 7:30pm at the Kresge Room (114) of the Barker Center (Dinner is served). We circulate papers one week before their workshop session.

 

DPI 440: Middle Eastern Politics and Policy

Instructor: Tarek Masoud

Explores the major political, economic, social, and security challenges facing - and emanating from - the Middle East. Particular attention paid to the causes of the so-called Arab Spring and the prospects for genuine democratization. Explores the role of colonial legacies, Islam, peculiarities of the physical environment, demographic patterns, cultures of patriarchy, the distortions of foreign aid and oil wealth, and the machinations of great powers in generating the region's particular pattern of political development. Embraces a variety of theoretical and empirical literatures, including translated works by Middle Eastern commentators, politicians, and social theorists. Students will emerge from the course with both an understanding of a changing region whose geopolitical importance - to the United States and the world - shows no sign of waning, and a grounding in some of the principal analytic approaches in the study of comparative political systems.

2018 Dec 06

Seminar: Arabic Studies Beyond Arabic: Integrating the Western Humanities Canon

1:00pm to 3:00pm

Location: 

Boylston Hall, Room 105

On December 6, 2018, the Alwaleed Program held the inaugural event in the Alwaleed bin Talal Seminar in Islamic Studies. In room packed with students, faculty and visiting fellows, world-renowned philologist and scholar of Islamic intellectual history, Dimitri Gutas, presented his new research on the translation of Aristotle's Poetics into Arabic and the transmission of its various manuscripts in the Arabic-speaking world. 

 

"Arabic Studies Beyond Arabic: Integrating the Western Humanities Canon"
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