Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by FAS Department "Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations"
Now showing items 1-20 of 53
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Ambivalences of Ottoman Modernity: Nahda, Tanzimat, and World Literature
(2017-05-11)The late Ottoman period of the nineteenth and early twentieth century has been almost exclusively associated with national cultural revivals, which prepared the ground for the emergence of nation-states that led to political ... -
The Ark of the Covenant and Divine Rage in the Hebrew Bible
(2016-08-29)The subject of my study is the Ark of the Covenant as portrayed within the Deuteronomistic History of the Hebrew Bible, particularly the tales featuring the Ark in Joshua and 1–2 Samuel. In these narratives, the God of ... -
Between China and Tibet: A Documentary History of Khotan in the Late Eighth and Early Ninth Century
(2016-09-16)Since the late 19th century, expeditions in Khotan sponsored by various countries have yielded several collections of Khotanese manuscripts. Among them, the British Collection, the Russian Collection, and the Hedin stand ... -
Beyond the Letters: The Question of Language in the Teachings of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch
(2015-03-27)This thesis examines the philosophy of language of Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezritch (d. 1772), one of the most influential and creative early Hasidic masters, and the teacher whose students effectively created the Hasidic movement. ... -
Collective Accountability among the Sages of Ancient Israel
(2013-09-30)The purpose of this dissertation is to consider Israel's biblical wisdom traditions comments on collective accountability in a systematic way. In order to accomplish this, each of five biblical wisdom books--Proverbs, ... -
Contradictions and Coherence in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan
(2016-05-09)The subject of this dissertation is the conception of congruity in the narrative of Targum Pseudo-Jonathan (Ps-J). A literary study of Ps-J reveals a two-part conundrum regarding congruity in the Targum. First, congruity ... -
Crazy in Love: The Story of Laila and Majnun in Early Modern South Asia
(2018-08-31)This study explores the emergence and flourishing of several vernacular literary cultures in South Asia between the early seventeenth and late nineteenth centuries through one of the most popular love stories told across ... -
The Cult of the Deified King in Ur III Mesopotamia
(2015-05-18)The topic of divine kingship in Mesopotamia, and in the Ur III period (ca. 2112-2004 B.C.E.) in particular, has been the subject of studies focused on aspects such as its ideology, rhetoric, political motivation, and place ... -
Discipline and Publish: Jews, the Logic of the State, and the Beginning of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature in Eastern Europe (1806-1845)
(2016-09-16)Jews, the Logic of the State, and the Beginning of Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature in Eastern Europe (1806-1845) investigates and connects two historical phenomena: The rise of modern Jewish literature in Eastern ... -
Eco-Alterity: Writing the Environment in the Literature of North Africa and the Middle East
(2019-05-18)The subject of this dissertation is the representation of the environment in the modern and contemporary literature of North Africa and the Middle East. I focus on texts that consciously engage with their landscapes, most ... -
The Emergence of ʿIlm al-Bayān: Classical Arabic Literary Theory in the Arabic East in the 7th/13th Century
(2016-09-12)This dissertation identifies a turning point in the development of literary theory as a discipline in the classical Arabic-Islamic world, starting in the Arabic East in the thirteenth century under the emerging framework ... -
Encyclopaedism in the Mamluk Period: The Composition of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī’s (D. 1333) Nihāyat al-Arab fī Funūn al-Adab
(2012-08-03)This dissertation explores the emergence of a golden age of Arabic encyclopaedic literature in the scholarly centers of Egypt and Syria during the Mamluk Empire (1250-1517). At the heart of the project is a study of Shihāb ... -
Esther and the Politics of Negotiation: An Investigation of Public and Private Spaces in Relationship to Possibilities for Female Royal Counselors
(2012-09-17)The primary question that this dissertation seeks to answer is, “How might we characterize the narrative depiction of Esther’s political involvement in the affairs of the Persian state?” Many scholars have tried to answer ... -
An Examination of the Relationship between Humans and Animals in the Hebrew Bible
(2013-02-08)The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the relationship between humans and animals in the Hebrew Bible. Although the Hebrew Bible contains a multitude of different perspectives on animals, I argue that there are ... -
Facing the Limits of Fiction: Self-Consciousness in Jewish American Literature
(2013-03-15)This thesis explores the limits of fictional language by studying the work of Jewish American writer-critics, novelists who significantly engaged with literary criticism, and critics who experimented with the novel or short ... -
From Siraf to Sumatra: Seafaring and Spices in the Islamicate Indo-Pacific, Ninth-Eleventh Centuries C.E.
(2013-10-08)This dissertation is a study of early Islamicate commerce in natural luxuries of the tropical Indian Ocean and Western Pacific Rim, such as spices, ambergris and pearls, between the ninth and eleventh centuries C.E. I ... -
God and the Devil in the Human Heart: The Dialogic Vision of Abramovitch and Dostoevsky
(2013-02-12)Scholarship on the founder of modern Jewish literature, Sholem Abramovitch (1836-1917), is a rich field of study, yet it has been largely abandoned today, and the author has hardly been studied at all in nineteenth-century ... -
Harmonizing Discursive Worlds: The Life and Times of Abu Al-Hasan Al-Harrali (D. 638/1241)
(2019-05-17)This dissertation explores the intellectual and spiritual legacy biography of Abu al-Hasan al-Harrali (d. 638/1241), a Sufi-oriented polymath from the Maghrib who remains obscure in the Euro-American academy despite his ... -
Hero Shtetls: Jewish Armed Self-Defense From the Pale to Palestine, 1917-1970
(2017-05-19)Relying on a research in more than two dozen archives in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Israel, and the United States, my dissertation traces the history of Jewish paramilitarism from the waning days of the Russian Empire to ... -
Honor and Shame in the Deuteronomic Covenant and the Deuteronomistic Presentation of the Davidic Covenant
(2013-09-30)The purpose of this dissertation is to identify the semantics of honor and shame in the Hebrew Bible and to demonstrate how these social values intersect with Israel's fundamental social organizing principle, covenant. ...