Estudios de Árabe, Hebreo y Persa en la Univ. de Texas

With the support the Dean of Liberal Arts and the UT Provosts’ Office, we have been able in the past six years to add thirteen hires: Mohammad Mohammad (Arabic linguistics), Samer Ali (Arabic literature), Karen Grumberg (Jewish and Hebrew Studies), Hina Azam (Arabic and Islamic Studies), Ami Pedahzur (Middle Eastern Studies and Government), Yoav Di-Capua (Middle Eastern Studies and History), Jason Brownlee (Middle Eastern Studies and Government), Fehintola Mosadomi (Yoruba language and culture), Sonia Seeman (Middle Eastern Ethnomusicology) and George Gavrilis (Middle Eastern Studies and Government), as well as Nader Morkus (Arabic language), Kristen Brustad (Arabic sociolinguistics) and Mahmoud Al-Batal (Arabic pedagogy).  

DMES has also received substantial financial support for graduate education from the College and the Office of Graduate Studies in the form of 11 TA positions for graduate students in Arabic, 3 in Hebrew, and 2 in Persian. Moreover, as a Title VI institution, we are able to offer FLAS (Foreign Language and Area Studies) fellowships to support advanced study of Arabic, Hebrew, and Persian. Beyond that, the Department is usually given two prestigious recruitment grants for the most qualified applicants. In total, while funding levels may change, we expect to able to admit and fund approximately twelve graduate students for Fall 2007.  We may admit a small number of additional students without funding.

Our deadline for admissions and funding applications is Dec. 11, 2006.
http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/ <http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/>  <http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/ <http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/> >
If you or your friends would like more information about UT, DMES or the City of Austin, please feel free to contact me off list. I will also attend the Annual Meeting of the Middle East Studies Assn (MESA) in Boston MA, Nov 18-21.
http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/MESA05/mesa05.htm <http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/MESA05/mesa05.htm>  <http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/MESA05/mesa05.htm <http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/MESA05/mesa05.htm> >
I would be happy to meet and discuss our programs.  Dr. Raizen, DMES Chair, and Kamran Aghaie, DMES Associate Chair and Director of UT’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies, will also be at MESA, and will be glad to meet with you as well.

Below, I have included a comprehensive list of active faculty who contribute to our graduate curriculum:
Peter F. Abboud, Professor, Arabic Studies, Arabic syntax and phonology; Arabic dialectology; medieval Arabic grammar and grammarians; socio-linguistics; history of the Arabic language

Kamran S. Aghaie, Associate Professors, Middle Eastern Studies, History. Islamic studies, Shi’ism, modern Iranian history, and modern Middle Eastern history; secondary areas of interest include world history, historiography, religious studies, nationalism, gender studies and economic history

Mahmoud Al-Batal, Associate Professor, Arabic Studies and Linguistics. Arabic language pedagogy, Arabic as a second language.

Kamran Asdar Ali, Associate Professors,  Middle Eastern Studies and Anthropology. Gender, development, health, political economy, critique of development, post-colonialism, labor history, Middle East, Egypt, South Asia

Samer Mahdy Ali, Assistant Professor, Arabic Studies, Comparative Literature and Islamic Studies. Islamic kingship, court literature and patronage, classical historiography, modern and medieval folklore and folklife, Arab women poets, oral performance of Homeric epic, literary criticism.

Hina Azam, Assistant Professor, Islamic, Arabic and Religious Studies. Islamic law and jurisprudence, women and Islam. Qur’an, Hadith, Sufism, theology, ethics.

Aaron Bar-Adon, Professor, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Sociolinguistics and language acquisition; Hebrew and Arabic language, literature, and linguistics

Jason Brownlee, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and Government, Democracy and democratization in the Middle East.

Kristen Brustad, Associate Professors,  Arabic Studies and Linguistics. Arabic dialects, sociolinguistics and Arabic language pedagogy.

Mounira Charrad, Associate Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and Sociology. Gender and women’s rights; political sociology; development; and comparative historical methodology

Diana K. Davis, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and Geography. Medical geography, ethnoveterinary medicine, political ecology, gender, environment, and development, pastoral societies, range ecology, gender, North Africa.

Yoav Di-Capua, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and History. Modern Arab Thought with an emphasis on Egypt.

David J. Eaton, Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and LBJ School of Public Affairs, Water; natural resources; agriculture; health; urban services; water management in the Jordan River Basin; public administration, management, and dispute resolution

Yildiray Erdener,  Senior Lecturer, Turkish Studies. Turkish language; folklore and ethnomusicology of Turkey and the Turkic Republics. Turkish minstrel music, folklore and music of the Middle East and Central Asia

George Gavrilis, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and Government. Politics of the Middle East.

Mohammad Ghanoonparvar, Professor, Persian Studies and Comparative Literature, 20th century Persian literature; comparative literary history and criticism; methodology and practice of literary translation

Kate Gillespie, Associate Professors, Middle Eastern Studies and McComb School of Business. International marketing; macromarketing

Karen Grumberg, Assistant Professor, Hebrew Studies. Contemporary Hebrew literature, American Jewish literature, Comparative Jewish literatures, Mizrahi writing, women’s writing in Israel

Barbara J. Harlow, Professor, Arabic Studies and English, Colonial and resistance literature of the Middle East and Africa

Clement Moore Henry, Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and LBJ School of Public Affairs. Comparative politics of the Middle East and North Africa; financial systems and business elites; international business (oil and political risk analysis).

Michael Craig Hillmann, Professor, Persian Studies. Persian language and literature; Iranian art and culture; literary biography

Harold A. Liebowitz, Professor, Hebrew and Jewish Studies, Archaeology and art history of the land of Israel in the Biblical and Greco-Roman periods; art and archaeology of the Ancient Near East with particular emphasis on the Late Bronze to Mamluk Periods in Israel, Jordan, and Syria; daily life in Ancient Israel; material culture and literature of the period of the Mishnah and Talmud; medieval Jewish illuminated manuscripts from Spain, and Old Testament narrative painting from the Byzantine period until the Renaissance

William Roger Louis, Professor, Middle Eastern Studies, History, British Studies. British Empire in the Middle East, especially in the post-1945 period; the contemporary Middle East

Ian Manners, Professor, Middle Eastern Studies and Geography. Resource management with particular reference to ecological and socioeconomic processes influencing decision-making; ecologically sustainable development; environmental impact assessment and mitigation

Abraham Marcus, Associate Professors,  Middle Eastern Studies, History and Arabic Studies. Arab and Ottoman history; Islamic history; social history of the Middle East; music cultures of the Middle East

Mohammad A. Mohammad, Associate Professors,  Arabic Studies. Linguistics and the Arabic language

Nader Morkus, Lecturer, Arabic Studies. Discourse analysis, intercultural communication between Arabs and Americans, the use of technology to enhance intercultural communication. Modern Standard Arabic and Egyptian Colloquial.

Fehintola Mosadomi, Assistant Professor, Yoruba language and culture, Yoruba women.

Adam Zachary Newton, Professor, Middle Eastern Studies, English, Jewish Studies. Comparative Jewish literatures; modern Jewish thought; 19th-century British, 20th century-American literature

Ami Pedahzur, Associate Professors,  Middle Eastern Studies and Government. Political extremism in Israel, political violence and political parties.

Esther L. Raizen, Associate Professors,  Hebrew and Jewish Studies. Modern and classical Hebrew language, linguistics and literature; courses taught: Hebrew as a foreign language; Jewish history and culture; Computer-assisted instruction and computational linguistics; Academic advising and student development

Sonia Seeman, Assistant Professor, Middle Eastern Ethnomusicology, "gypsy" music of Turkey.

Yaron Shemer, Senior Lecturer, Middle Eastern Studies and School of Communication (Radio Television Film). Israeli film; Hebrew language and cultures

Faegheh S. Shirazi, Associate Professors,  Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Textiles, dress, and material culture in the Middle East; the meanings of veiling

Denise A. Spellberg, Associate Professors,  Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, History. Middle East history and religion; medieval Islamic history; women’s studies

Helene Tissieres, Assistant Professor, French and Italian, Middle Eastern Studies, Francophone African Literatures.

Karin S. Wilkins, Associate Professors,  Middle Eastern Studies and School of Communication (Radio Television Film). Development communication as it relates to international health, population and environmental issues, media studies
 
Monica Yaniv, Lecturer, Hebrew Studies. Hebrew language and pedagogy.

Abraham Zilkha, Associate Professors,  Hebrew, Arabic and Jewish Studies. Hebrew language and linguistics; modern Israel

This is a skeleton of UT’s human resources related to the Middle East. Please feel free to peruse the websites of other depts for faculty in Government, Communication (Radio Television Film), Linguistics, School of Education (Foreign Language Education), Spanish and Portuguese, French and Italian, Architecture, Art and Art History, Information Science (Library School), Law, LBJ School of Public Affairs, etc. MES grad students are encouraged to take classes outside MES if they complement their program of work.

One facet that is perhaps unique to UT is our offering of five registers of Arabic: modern standard, classical, Qur’anic, as well as Levantine and Egyptian colloquial.

Moreover, the Dept of Middle Eastern Studies stresses the interconnections between the Persian, Hebrew and Arabic traditions as well as Islamic and Jewish Studies. For example, in the next five years, Prof. Grumberg and I plan to develop a course that particularly focuses on the intersections of Hebrew and Arabic cultures in medieval Spain, and of course in modern times, stressing the writings of Mizrahi authors and Palestinian writers who write in Hebrew (such as Anton Shammas).  A similar course is planned for Hebrew and Arabic grammar.

There is ample info about UT’s libraries at
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/help/librarylist.html <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/help/librarylist.html>  <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/help/librarylist.html <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/help/librarylist.html> >

As well as the Middle Eastern Collection
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/subject/melp/index.html <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/subject/melp/index.html>  <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/subject/melp/index.html <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/subject/melp/index.html> >
which includes holdings in English, French, German, Italian, Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Tajiki and Kurdish housed mostly at the Perry-Castañeda (Main) Library (PCL),
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/pcl/ <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/pcl/>  <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/pcl/ <http://www.lib.utexas.edu/pcl/> >

Rare books and manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Center
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/ <http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/>  <http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/ <http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/> >

Please feel free to ask me questions.

I  wish you all the best,
Samer Ali

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Samer M. Ali, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor

Arabic Studies
Comparative Literature

Graduate Advisor,
Dept of Middle Eastern Studies

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Dept of Middle Eastern Studies
University of Texas at Austin
One University Station, F9400
Austin, TX  78712
512-471-3881
512-471-7834 (fax)
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Fall Office Hours: W 2-5pm, WMB 6.112

Learn more about Arabic Studies at UT?
http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/mes/arabic/ <http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/mes/arabic/>

Know the US Public Dept?
http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm <http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm>