The Seminar Series is a weekly lecture and discussion organized by the Near Eastern Studies Department and Program. Prominent scholars, journalists, diplomats and others are invited to to speak on a range of topics relating to the Middle East, North Africa, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and South Asia. Previously called the “Brown Bag Lunch Talks,” the series has been running since the 1970’s. It meets on Mondays at noon while the university is in session. The events are open to the public and usually take place in Jones Hall 202. If an event is Hybrid, the registration link can be found in the announcement for each event on this page.
Conveners 2024-2025: Eve Krakowski
Upcoming Events
Dror Weil is an Assistant Professor in History of Early Modern Asia (East Asian and the Islamicate World) at Faculty of History, University of Cambridge and an Official Fellow of King’s College Cambridge. He is a member at the Institute for Advanced Study during the academic year 2024/2025. Dror graduated from Princeton University in 2016…
Raha Rafii received her PhD from the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Pennsylvania. She specializes in Islamic jurisprudence and Arabic philology, and has also written on Orientalism in Islamic art museum exhibitions, manuscript acquisition, and the ethics of digitization. She is a lecturer at…
Reyhan Durmaz
Betty Rosen earned her Ph.D. in Arabic and Hebrew Literature from the University of California-Berkeley’s Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Program in Critical Theory in 2023. She also holds an MA in Arabic Literature from SOAS University of London and an A.B. in Comparative Literature from Harvard College. Her…
George A. Kiraz is a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Advanced Study, teaches Syriac at Princeton University, and is the director of Beth Mardutho: The Syriac Institute. He has written extensively on Syriac studies, computational linguistics, and the digital humanities.
The Cairo Genizah, a treasure trove of…