News from

Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations

Reset All Filters
44 Results
Ancient rock carvings unearthed in northern Iraqi city of Mosul
NBC News

Ancient rock carvings unearthed in northern Iraqi city of Mosul

Experts from the University of Pennsylvania are supporting the reconstruction effort for the Mashki Gate in Iraq, which led to the discovery of eight marble slabs dating back to the Assyrians.

Finding community in the Jewish High Holy Days
A cut apple and pomegranate surround a honey jar with a wooden honey stick on top. An uncut apple and pomegranate are in the background.

Finding community in the Jewish High Holy Days

Three cultural and academic leaders at Penn consider how a return to experiencing Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in person offered physical and spiritual healing.

Kristina García, Michele W. Berger

How Iran’s hijab protest movement became so powerful
The New Yorker

How Iran’s hijab protest movement became so powerful

In a Q&A, Fatemeh Shams of the School of Arts & Sciences discusses the importance of Iran’s Kurdish minority in its recent uprising, as well as the benefits and drawbacks of leaderless movements.

‘Woman, life, freedom’
WNYC Radio (New York City)

‘Woman, life, freedom’

Fatemeh Shams of the School of Arts & Sciences is featured on an episode of “On the Media” to discuss how the recent wave of protests in Iran differs from previous movements.

The story the bowls tell
penn museum incantation bowl being examined

Gross and Elitzur-Leiman are studying some intact, pristine bowls and others, like the one above, that are in pieces. “The sherds tell a story, too,” says Blanchard.

The story the bowls tell

In an ambitious new project, historian Simcha Gross and Harvard’s Rivka Elitzur-Leiman are studying hundreds of ancient incantation bowls housed at the Penn Museum. They hope to better understand the objects and eventually, build a database of all these bowls worldwide.

Michele W. Berger

The ‘music’ of one poet’s words, translated
Huda Fakhreddine holding the poetry book outside

(Homepage image) As a scholar, Fakhreddine works hard to retain as much of a poem as possible when it moves from Arabic to another language. “It’s a challenge that all translation involves. We talk about what’s lost and what’s gained,” she says. “It’s all exaggerated here with these short musical pieces. Their meaning is ground in their sound.”

The ‘music’ of one poet’s words, translated

With help from her daughter, scholar Huda Fakhreddine published an English version of 30 poems for children written by her father in Arabic, paying tribute to their endearing and enduring subject matter and to the musicality and richness of their sound.

Michele W. Berger

From the archives, a class on different communities of Jews in China
students looking at manuscripts in a penn libraries course

Homepage image: Students brought their own expertise to the experience of working with the archival materials, including translation of Chinese characters written on the back of photographs. Working together (center) were College freshmen (from left) Louis Dong, Nancy (Ziqi) An, and Alice (Yucheng) Feng.

From the archives, a class on different communities of Jews in China

Kathryn Hellerstein created an opportunity for her first-year seminar students to study archival material from a collection donated to the Penn Libraries by her mentor, Israeli scholar Irene Eber.
Nationalism, American evangelicals, and conservatism
An American flag flaps in front of the tip of a white church steeple topped by a cross, with a blue sky and clouds in the background

Three experts on evangelical Christianity shared their thoughts with Penn Today on the history of American evangelicals in politics, Trump’s appeal to them, and what it all means for the future of the GOP.

Nationalism, American evangelicals, and conservatism

Historians Anthea Butler and Heather J. Sharkey and political scientist Michele Margolis share their thoughts on the history of American evangelicals in politics, Trump’s appeal, and what it means for the future of the GOP.

Kristen de Groot