News
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Spring 2026 Arabic Calligraphy Workshop! We are grateful to our sponsors, volunteers, partners, and especially Dr. Muhammad Habib for making this…
Thank you to everyone who joined us for the Spring 2026 Arabic Calligraphy Workshop, held on Friday, April 10th from 3–5 PM at the 18th Avenue Library (Rooms 070/090). The event was a beautiful…
Professor Johanna Sellman has been named the 2025 recipient of the Deborah and Ronald Ratner Distinguished Teaching Award, the highest teaching honor in the College of Arts and…
Professor Sean Anthony has been named an Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor, the highest faculty distinction awarded by the College of Arts and Sciences. This honor…
Syncretic Spirits of Fire: Narratives of the jinn and related beings in Near Eastern religious corpora
Author: Vija…
Salma Albezreh was awarded the ninth annual Andrew Rippin Best Paper Prize for her paper: “Who But You Can Save Us? Allāh’s Theological Position in Ancestral Arabian Religion and…
NESA wrapped up the Autumn semester with a little sugar and a lot of smiles! From December 8–10, students stopped by our selfie station to enjoy hot chocolate, tea, and delicious treats. It was the…
Exploring Arab & Russian Cultures: SEELC & NESA Faculty Partner with Metro Schools
January 8, 2026 – January 22, 2026
This January, the Department of Slavic…
Professor James Moore explains what DLATO is and how DEAPS works in a lecture given to the Center for AI and Data Science at Tel Aviv University.
You can view his lecture on YouTube.
…
The Podcast of Jewish Ideas Episode 82. Zechariah al-Dhahiri with Dr. Adena Tanenbaum (12/25/2025)
J.J. and Dr. Adena Tanenbaum unravel the dynamics of late…
Associate Professor Adena Tanenbaum has published a new book titled Beguiling Guidance: Zechariah Alḍāhirī’s Sefer Hamusar (Brill, published 2025, copyright 2026).
Synopsis…
Dr. Sarah Schellinger's book Nubia in the Lost Civilizations series published by Reaktion Books provides an accessible history of Nubia from prehistory to present-day Sudan. The book has…
Professor Ahmad Al-Jallad, Chair in Arabic Studies, was featured in a Science article for his research on the deciphering of the Dhofari script. Al-Jallad's study is a major breakthrough for…
This summer, Associate Professor Naomi Brenner was awarded the Stuart and Lynda Resnick Fellowship at the National Library of Israel.
The fellowship provides a generous stipend and a…
We are pleased to share that two students within NESA were awarded a prestigious and highly competitive CASA scholarship to study Arabic next year.
Bryn Barr graduated this spring with dual…
Congratulations to NESA graduate students Gamze Akbas and Zari Mahmoudi, who successfully completed their PhD defenses in April!
Gamze's dissertation is entitled “For They Are Deficient in…
On March 21 in the Hagerty Hall Intercultural Gallery, NESA hosted a Persian New Year (Nowruz) celebration. The event consisted of Persian traditional music, snacks, and sweets. Thank you to all…
Author and journalist Sadiya Ansari joined NESA on March 17 to discuss her memoir, In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and My Grandmother’s Secret.
Students read her memoir during class…
This January, faculty from the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures (SEELC) and the Department of Near Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures (NESA) collaborated to…
Dr. Kamali Sarvestani hosted a NESA Persian Dinner Party at his home on Saturday, Nov. 9., as a celebration of Persian culture and community.
Dr. Naomi Brenner was the special guest of the…
Dr. Noor Murteza hosted a class party on Nov. 14 for her Arabic 1101 students, which included a meal and class trivia on Arab food!
The students enjoyed their time, tried new food, and…
Thank you to everyone who attended the CLLC World Language Party last week! NESA had a table where students were able to talk to language professors and tutors about the language and other courses…
Professor Ahmad Al-Jallad, the Sofia Chair of Arabic Studies, recently gave a TEDx Talk titled From History to Myth, and Back Again.
Why do myths of lost worlds, like…
Professor Ahmad Al-Jallad, Chair in Arabic Studies, was featured in a Live Science article as he was the co-author of the study of a "Paleo-Arabic inscription on a boulder near an abandoned mosque…
Thank you to everyone who came to our Nowruz celebration on March 21st!
Nowruz ("new day" in Persian) is the Iranian New Year based on the astronomical vernal equinox. At our event, we…
Recent events that NESA has participated in hosting:
We would like to express our gratitude to Dr. Muhammad Habib for hosting an Arabic Calligraphy Workshop open to the public on October…
Since October 7, many of us are following the war in Israel and Gaza with horror. Some of us are affected deeply and personally, with colleagues, friends, and family killed or in danger. We dread…