News

NES Graduate Students, Alumna Awarded Humanities Council 2022 Flash Grants
June 8, 2022

Three NES graduate students and one NES alumna were awarded 2022 Flash Grants by the Humanities Council.

Near Eastern Studies Celebrates Class Day 2022
May 24, 2022

Near Eastern Studies held its first in-person Class Day since 2019 on May 23, 2022. During the celebration, the Department and Program announced departmental honors and presented this year’s prize winners.

Kahn ’22 Elected to Phi Beta Kappa
May 20, 2022

NES senior concentrator Ethan Kahn has been elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Kahn previously was a recipient of the 2018-2019 Shapiro Prize for Academic Excellence and named a 2022 Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative graduate scholar. The Phi Beta Kappa Society, founded in 1776 and the oldest of all national honorary scholastic societies…

Rustow Awarded Grant to Apply AI and Machine-learning to Geniza Documents.
May 12, 2022

Marina Rustow, Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East and Professor of Near Eastern Studies and History, has been granted funding by the University’s Schmidt DataX Fund for her “Handwritten Text Recognition for the Princeton Geniza Project (HTR4PGP).” The…

Rashidbeigi Awarded Outstanding Presentation Prize at 2022 Research Day
May 6, 2022

Sixth-year Ph.D. student Samin Rashidbeigi participated in Princeton Research Day 2022 and was awarded a prize for Outstanding Presentation. Her video, The Making of the Modern Donor, was featured at the PRD2022 Mainstage event held May 5 in Frist, where she received her award from Acting Dean of the Graduate School Cole. M. Crittenden…

Chen Gong Wins Two AATT Awards
March 17, 2022

Third-year Ph.D. student Chen Gong has won two American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages (AATT) awards. He was the winner of the inaugural Norman Itzkowitz Turkish Short Story Award in the Advanced Level category for his story, “Kanat ve Duvar.” The Award “is an annual prize granted to the two best short stories written in…

Rustow’s The Lost Archive Awarded 2022 Haskins Medal
Jan. 28, 2022

Marina Rustow’s The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020) has been awarded the 2022 Haskins Medal by The Medieval Academy of America. The citation read in part: The Lost Archive “displays an astonishing level of technical virtuosity, stitching…

Mansour Defends Ph.D. Dissertation
Jan. 28, 2022

Nadirah Mansour successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, “An Intellectual and Material History of the Transition between Manuscript and Print in Arabic, 19th Century,” at her Final Public Oral Examination held Thursday, January 27, 2022, via Zoom. The examination committee consisted of her advisors, Jonathan…

Verskin’s A Vision of Yemen honored by MLA
Dec. 7, 2021

Alan Verskin’s A Vision of Yemen: The Travels of a European Orientalist and His Native Guide: A Translation of Hayyim Habshuh’s Travelogue received an honorable mention from the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work competition. The committee citation reads:…

Montoya *21 Directs Documentary Film
Oct. 22, 2021

Katy Montoya, who completed her M.A. in Near Eastern Studies in June 2021, has completed her short documentary film, The Need to Subsist Here. Recently released, the film may be viewed on Vimeo through the link embedded in the title. Help it win the…