Department Homepage
The College of Arts & Sciences
Study the languages, literatures, cultures, religions and history of regions from ancient Sumer to the modern Middle East.
The Near East is an older term for the Middle East. As defined by the department, the “Near East” extends from Morocco (and medieval Spain), through Egypt, the Levant (Israel and Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan), Turkey, Southwest Asia and North Africa.
Faculty specializing in the earliest millennia of the region’s history bring a range of disciplines, methods and theoretical orientations to bear on the study of what is conventionally called the ancient Near East. Geographically, our vision is wide, extending from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean to the lowlands of Mesopotamia, from the highlands of Anatolia and the Caucasus to the plains of southwestern Iran.
Learn more about our faculty, research, undergraduate study and graduate study.
Columbia University's Khatchig Mouradian will give a lecture, “Ethnic Cleansing in the Long 19th Century: The Native American, Circassian, and Armenian Cases,” on April 24.
Read more
With the award, Ziad Fahmy is working on the first critical history of early Egyptian radio.
Read more
Gabe Levin, editor in chief of the Cornell Daily Sun and a student in the College of Arts & Sciences, spent the summer of 2024 reporting on the Israel-Gaza war.
Read more
Fellows will pursue research in the sciences, social sciences and humanities.
Read more
Melissa Lewin ’00 and her husband Rob ’99 are active backers of Cornell through their support of Cornell’s Public History Initiative and the archaeology program.
Read more
Sturt Manning, received the P. E. MacAllister Field Archaeology Award at the Annual Meetings of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR) in Boston in November.
Read more
Olga Verlato's dissertation, “Languages of Power and People: Multilingualism, Politics, and Resistance in Modern Egypt and the Mediterranean,” received the Malcolm H. Kerr Award from the Middle East Studies Association of North America.
Read more
Eleven teaching faculty from across the university have been awarded Cornell’s highest honors for graduate and undergraduate teaching, Interim President Michael I. Kotlikoff announced Oct. 22.
Read more
Take Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, or Persian to fulfill the College of Arts & Sciences language requirement!
We also offer instruction in some of the ancient Middle Eastern languages like Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Hieroglyphic Egyptian, and Sumerian.
Interested in exploring the languages, literatures, cultures, religions, and history of the Middle East from antiquity to the modern day? Consider pursuing a major in Near Eastern studies.
We also offer undergraduate minors in Arabic and Near Eastern studies.
MW 11:40-12:55, H. Polat, 3 credits
A counter-history of modern humanitarianism, humanitarian law, and human rights, with perspectives from the Near East.
MW 10:10-11:25, J. Lawrence, 3 credits
This course will introduce students to the study of sex and sexuality in the medieval and early modern Islamic World.
