The Gospel of John: A Biography
February 2026
Written some two thousand years ago, the Gospel of John is the only Christian Gospel to place Jesus at the creation of the world, and the only one where we find the stories of the raising of Lazarus, the woman taken in adultery, and the changing of water into wine at the wedding in Cana. The Gospel of John also points an accusing finger at Jesus’s Jewish opponents and has been used by medieval crusaders, Protestant reformers, and white supremacists to legitimize antisemitic violence. Kim Haines-Eitzen traces the legacy of this complex, beautiful, and at times deeply troubling work, from its composition in the late first century to its enduring power today.
Moses Maimonides: A Very Short Introduction
August 2025
This "Very Short Introduction" to Moses Maimonides surveys Maimonides' many intellectual, literary, and professional ventures. Born in Islamic Cordoba, he ultimately settled in Cairo, where he served as jurist and civic leader and a highly esteemed physician with responsibilities at the Fatimid and Ayyubid courts, even as he deepened his philosophical-theological pursuits. He moved seamlessly between specialized, private, and public Jewish and Muslim spheres.
Ongoing research in our department encompasses a multitude of disciplines including the history, culture and anthropology of modern Iran; the history and literature of modern Egypt and the Arab World; ancient Egypt and ancient Iraq; Islamic history and law; the archaeology of Southwest Asia; medieval Judeo-Arabic; Judaism; biblical studies; religion in late antiquity; comparative linguistics; medieval Arabic literature; and modern literature and film.
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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.
Areas of shared interest among our faculty include an abiding commitment to studying past social worlds, from the lived experience of communities and how they came to cohere (be they religious, political, scribal, economic, etc.), to the overarching structures and institutions that ordered ancient societies. We are linked by a concern for the technologies and materialities that shaped the ancient Near East, from the craft of writing and the scribal arts to ceramics, sailing ships and soundscapes. Our shared perspective on the region is also attuned to the different uses of the past, both in the past and the present, and the ways in which tangible and intangible heritage has for millennia been put in the service of the region’s social and political projects. As archaeologists, philologists and experts in ancient religious texts, we share an interest in exploring the opportunities for meaningful interdisciplinary engagement – within and beyond the humanities – that the rich material and written records of this important world region provide.