Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons^™

Topographies Of Being: World-Making And Ontological Formation In Modern Saint Catherine, South Sinai, Ahmad Mahana

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of the ecological and sociological processes involved in the production of the socionatural space of the contemporary town and natural protectorate of Saint Catherine, South Sinai. Revered by all Abrahamic religions as the site of the Great Theophany, the town has perpetually been considered an area of immense spiritual and natural significance. In recent decades, however, the town has undergone a series of modernizing campaigns that have not only threatened the region’s natural environment and indigenous lifeways but have also jeopardized the plurality of its extant lifeworlds. By relying on a variety of ethnographic methods, …

Reconfiguring The Category Of 'Sudan' Through The Literary Field: Representation, Disposability, Ambiguity And The 'Magical' In Four Post-Colonial Novels (2002-2022), Mourad Farahat

Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis I shall argue that contemporary African literature, with ‘’both its ethnographic imagination and anthropological complexity’’ (Orock, 2022, p.3), its use of ‘disruptive’ characters, and its focus on the embeddedness of the ‘collective’, the ‘common’ and the ‘vulgar’ in the personal (Mbembe, 2003), may help us mitigate some social scientific limitations on the study of Africa, and may aid us in understanding relations of power within the post-colony. I seek to show how contemporary Sudanese literature has already moved beyond the fixed social categories, lines, and limits which dominate some of the social scientific literature on Sudan. Literature …

Anxious Futures: Capital, Nation And Advertising In Beirut, Lebanon, Caitlin Alais Callahan

Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary billboard advertising in Beirut fuels anxiety in Beirut’s citizens. In a city suffering from daily uncertainties caused by a devastating financial collapse in 2019, and mourning victims of the worst non-nuclear explosion to ever occur in the Port of Beirut in 2020, Beirutis are also faced with advertising which constantly reinforces uneasiness. Visual advertisements market visas to leave the country, purchasing second passports and money counting machines, forming quotidian reminders of the current state of the country. Using interviews and visual ethnographic material collected during the summer of 2023, this thesis discusses how billboards help to foster dialogue around …

Which Tools Can Aid The Management Of Intangible Cultural Heritage In Community Based Heritage Organizations In Cairo? A Case Study Of Shubra’S Archive, Mienke Zwemstra

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a comprehensive overview of cultural heritage management in Cairo, focusing particularly on intangible heritage and the potential benefits of digital tools in this field. It highlights the marginalization of community-based organizations in the broader narrative of heritage management in Cairo, along with the limited alignment and collaboration between local, national and international heritage institutions. Drawing from ethnographic research conducted at the Shubra’s Archive (SARD), this study identifies the challenges faced by such organizations, including the reliance on volunteers and international funding for mission implementation. It emphasizes the importance of strategic planning and collaboration with municipal and national …

Picturing Consumer Culture, Cultural Hybridity, And Womanhood: Farah Al Qasimi’S Photographs From 2012 To 2020, Minji Lee

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines Farah Al Qasimi’s 2012-2020 color photographs, arguing that this work presents a distinctive and salient critique of domesticity, material culture, and womanhood in the UAE. Through her lens as a woman and a culturally hybrid subject, Al Qasimi explores the tensions of modernization, globalization, consumerism, and gender.

Student Perceptions Of Icc Development And The Reasons For It During Casa@Auc, Stephen Wright

Theses and Dissertations

Research has described how studying abroad has become a major goal in the Arabic world, focusing on understanding the ideas and way of life of another culture and people. Study abroad programs increase students' “Intercultural communicative competence” as indicated by researchers like Maharaja (2018) and Lee and Song (2019). The current study is a case study involving three participants. It focuses on students' perceptions of the influence of the CASA@AUC study abroad program on their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) as reflected by ACTFL performance indicators they are capable of executing. Results of the study indicate that they have reached advanced …

A Tale Of Two And A Half Mummies: An Intrusive Burial From The Tomb Of Karabasken (Tt 391), Hayley Ruth Goddard

Theses and Dissertations

In 2014, the South Asasif Conservation Project, directed by Elena Pischikova, discovered a previously unknown side chamber in the tomb of Karabasken (TT 391), a proto-Kushite tomb located in the South Asasif. Designated as Side Chamber 1A, it contained an intact burial assemblage. The contents of the tomb, all of which had suffered damage caused by repeated flooding, included three coffins which each contained a mummy. One of the mummies was most unusual, consisting of just the upper half of the body of a young man which was truncated at the waist.

This study is the first to assess and …

Printing Devotion: Sufi Books And Their Transregional Networks In An Age Of Print, Mariam Elashmawy

Theses and Dissertations

The production of printed books in the Muslim world is a story that encompasses an array of actors, spanning centuries, and taking place in remote, yet connected locales. This thesis provides an intellectual history of Ṣūfī print production of Islamicate mystical works in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries by examining three overlapping genres: poetry, Ṣūfī histories (hagiography), and litanies (aḥzāb). Texts such as the Dīwān of devotional poetry by Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1234), the litany of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), Ḥizb al-baḥr, and Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, a history of the Naqshbandiyya order by Fakhr …

A Methodological Approach To Utilize Egyptian Colloquial Arabic As A Source For Ancient Egyptian Linguistic Analysis, Ahmed Osman

Theses and Dissertations

Traces of the ancient Egyptian language can still be observed in modern Egyptian colloquial Arabic, which is the form of Arabic adopted by Egyptians as their native spoken language. This thesis aims to better understand the ancient Egyptian language through the analysis of its lexical survivals. It presents a new methodological approach to utilize ancient Egyptian lexical survivals as a source to study the ancient Egyptian language. A selected set of fifty-five ancient Egyptian lexical survivals was computed by matching ancient Egyptian and documented Egyptian colloquial Arabic words having the same semantic fields. While it was generally assumed that the …

Texts, Language, And History In The Madhab-Law Tradition: A Study Of The ShāfiʿĪ School, Tarek Ghanem

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis advances the study of the legal literature from the madhhab-law tradition by way of studying the Shāfiʿī literary tradition and its two most authoritative classics. These two works are al-Nawawī’s (d. 676/1278) digest Minhāj al-ṭālibīn and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s (d. 974/1567) commentary on it, Tuḥfat al-minhāj. This study will provide a typology of the development of the Shāfiʿī juristic texts. The typology is based on an indigenous and coherent periodization centered around an analysis of the intellectual and social developments within the Shāfiʿī legal tradition, not the classical Eurocentric periodization scheme. The main objective of this typology is …

[You Are With] Kin And [You Can Be At] Ease, Abdul Azim Al Ghussein

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an exploration of hospitality, sharing and acclimation within a studio art practice as a means of fostering consideration of others. I employ a practice whereby I disrupt the typical gallery context, and through the production and dissemination of consumable items from the Middle East, I examine how resources can be used, valued, and shared to accommodate various and unspecified others and provide opportunities for crossing thresholds of guest and host relationships.

Al-Ghazali's Integral Epistemology: A Critical Analysis Of The Jewels Of The Quran, Amani Elshimi

Theses and Dissertations

The Jewels of the Quran by renowned Islamic scholar Abu Hamid al-Ghazali has usually been published as a two-volume publication, consisting of al-Ghazali’s hierarchy of sciences, followed by a thematic classification of verses from the Quran. A recent edition of the book includes a third chapter which is often published alone as The Book of Forty Religious Principles, but which al-Ghazali makes reference to in his introduction. A thorough, contextualized, critical analysis of the 3-chapter publication reveals al-Ghazali’s more comprehensive integral framework of knowledge – one which stems from and is held by a core experience of the Divine, and …

Horizon Of Possibilities: Artists And The City In Postwar Beirut, Tatiana Mouarbes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis narrates a history of postwar cultural production framed by urban redevelopment in Beirut, Lebanon (1989-Present). Focusing on artists engagements with the city, this thesis demonstrates how artists thought through the legacies of war inflicted upon the beleaguered city of Beirut in order to construct livable futures.

Mass Media’S Cultivation Effect On Islamic, Muslim, And Qur’Anic Prejudice, Shanna J. Carlson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the power of the mass media’s ability to cultivate reality in terms of the threat of Islam. A rhetorical analysis of the messages portrayed by the mass media is then compared to the findings of the study. While the study did not find any significant correlation between consumption of media and fear of Muslims, the Qur’an, or Islam, it did find a strong negative correlation between inter-group contact and salience of stereotypes.

This Wall Speaks: Graffiti And The Location Of Transnational Space Palestine, Ashley Toenjes

Theses and Dissertations

Extant literature on the Palestinian-Israeli separation wall privileges the wall's function in border-making, while ignoring other discursive and spacial functions it fulfills. My thesis reaches beyond the border-making function of the wall, resituating it as a node among different spacial networks of activism, tourism, and electronic media. My paper argues that Palestinian tactical use of graffiti on the separation wall traverses these spatial networks and provides a case for us to consider graffiti not only as a process which links these networks, but also as a discursive tool through which Palestinians appeal to transnational actors, particularly those who are complicit …

Hebrew Idioms In The Small Plates Of Nephi, E. Craig Bramwell

Theses and Dissertations

The problem of this thesis is: To determine whether there are Hebraic idioms in the Small Plates of Nephi in the Book of Mormon that have been retained in translation. An idiom is defined as any peculiar genius of the language: grammatical, syntactical, or verbal imagery. Non-Hebraic idioms were not considered.
The assumptions underlying the problem are:
1. The Book of Mormon is a record of the Nephites whose cultural, social, and lingual milieu originated in Israel.
2. The Book of Mormon was originally written according to a Hebrew pattern of thought and communication.
3. Joseph Smith, as a young …