Associate Professor of Near Eastern Studies and the Program in Judaic Studies and Jonathan Dickinson Bicentennial Preceptor Jonathan Gribetz has received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for his project “Reading Herzl in Beirut: The PLO’s Research on Judaism and Israel Project Description.” He will…

Lecturer in Hebrew Philip Zhakevich’s new book, Scribal Tools in Ancient Israel: A Study of Biblical Hebrew Terms for Writing Materials and Implements, has been published by Eisenbrauns, an imprint of Pennsylvania University Press. “In this book, Zhakevich examines the technology of writing as it…

İ. Metin Kunt, an alumnus of the Department of Near Eastern Studies, passed away on December 3, 2020. Kunt, who specialized in Ottoman History, taught at a number of institutions, including Sabancı University, Boğaziçi University, and Cambridge University. He completed his dissertation, “The Köprülü Years, 1656–1661,”  under the direction of…

Lecturer in Hebrew Philip Zhakevich was awarded the 2020 William G. Dever Archaeological Fellowship for Biblical Scholars. The Fellowship, established in 2015, provides $7,000 to a qualified American or American-based Ph.D. candidate or non-tenured faculty member in the field of biblical studies “to be used to cover transportation; one month on…

Baki Tezcan, who earned his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies in 2001, is President-elect of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association (OTSA). Tezcan, who is Professor of History and of Middle East/South Asian Studies at UC Davis, will succeed another Near Eastern Studies Ph.D., Amy Singer (1989, Professor of Middle…

A Slave Between Empires: A Transimperial History of North Africa (Columbia University Press, 2020) by M’hamed Oualdi, a former member of the Near Eastern Studies faculty, was…