Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons^™

Landscaping Israel: Power And Resistance On The Ground, Janey Kemp

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Evolution Of The Story Of Julian The Apostate In Early Islamic Sources = Tabalwur QiṣṢAt Al-QayṣAr Yūliyānūs Fī Al-Fikr Al-Islāmī Al-Ta’Rīkhī, Abed El-Rahman Tayyara

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

The article examines the representations of the story of Roman emperor, Julian the Apostate (r. 361-363), in early Islamic historical writing and the channels of information that Muslims writers used to construct this narrative. The study is a comparative analysis of pertinent Islamic accounts in terms of narrative strategies, sources (Arabic, Persian, Syriac, and Greek), and methodology. In so doing, this study provides a constructive framework that enhances our understanding the historical agendas of these Muslim historians as well as the cultural discourses against which they wrote. The study also reflects on the early stages of the incorporation of Greco-Roman …

How And Why Do Dictatorships Survive? Lessons For The Middle East, Erica Frantz

Bridgewater Review

Political events in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have dominated news headlines for the past two years. Since the revolution in Tunisia in December 2010, one dictatorship after the next has appeared on the verge of collapse, as citizens gather en masse to voice their demands for democratic governance. In countries such as Libya and Egypt, though relatively successful democratic elections were held following the collapse of long-standing dictatorships, it is uncertain whether the new political system being installed will be democratic or autocratic. When looking to the future of the region beyond the Arab Spring, one thing …

Why Some Muslim Countries Are Democracies And Some Are Not, Shaheen Mozaffar

Bridgewater Review

The transitions to democracy in Tunisia and Egypt shortly after the popular uprisings of the Arab Spring, and subsequently in Libya, provide an opportunity to test the empirical validity of the conventional wisdom that democracy cannot be established and sustained in Muslim countries. This article undertakes this task through a systematic comparative analysis of 56 countries classified as Muslim countries by virtue of their membership in the Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC). It first maps variations in the incidence of democracy among the 56 Muslim countries based on the widely used Freedom House Rating (FHR, www.freedomhouse.org) of countries into “Free,” …

Will The Arab Spring Succeed In Bringing Bread, Freedom, And Dignity?, Sandra Popiden

Bridgewater Review

Economic discontent fueled the political dissatisfaction that erupted in the Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen in 2011. Demonstrators blamed repressive authoritarian governments for slow economic growth, increasing poverty and social inequality, high youth unemployment and rampant corruption. Alongside demands for increased political freedom, greater participation in politics, and an end to repression were calls for economic freedom and improved well-being. The uprisings, which spawned democracy in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya, continue to reverberate across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by opening up previously closed public spaces to wider popular participation in national debates over …

Social Media And Political Changes In Al-Alam Al-Arabi, Jabbar Al-Obaidi

Bridgewater Review

The Arab countries are typically described as lacking democratic traditions, freedom of the press, human rights and civil liberties. The utilization of social media for political purposes became crucial to the widespread expression of pent-up social discontent that precipitated the Arab Spring. Uploaded videos, photos, and Twitter feeds served to outrage people in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. This volatile combination of a young population, authoritarian rule, corruption and poverty is prompting youth to spearhead political demonstrations and the demand for regime change.

Introduction: Democracy, Islam And Development In The Arab World, Shaheen Mozaffar

Bridgewater Review

No abstract provided.

Urbanism In The Northern Levant During The 4th Millennium Bce, Rasha El-Endari

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The development of urbanism in the Near East during the 4thmillennium BCE has been an important debate for decades and with recent scientific findings, a revival of this intellectual discussion has come about. Many archaeologists suggested that urban societies first emerged in southern Mesopotamia, and then expanded to the north and northwest. With recent excavations in northern Mesopotamia, significant evidence has come to light with the finding of monumental architecture and city walls dated to the beginning of the 4th millennium BCE, well before southern Mesopotamian urban expansion. These discoveries reflect important administrative systems and stratified sociopolitical structures within these …

Book Review: Fragile States, Lohar Brock, Hans-Henrik Holm, Georg Sorensen, Michael Stohl, Hakim Mohandas Amani Williams

Africana Studies Faculty Publications

In an era when good governance features prominently on the global development agenda, there seems to be a corollary spotlight on state fragility. In this book - a quick read that covers much ground - the authors wade into the conceptual waters of state fragility with the following aims: (i) sketching more clearly its conceptual parameters, including its core characteristics; (ii) dissecting its connection to violent conflict; (iii) analyzing the role that international society has played in relation to fragile statehood; and (iv) laying out two proposals for tackling its intractability. These analyses are conducted through the prism of three …

Ua12/2/30 Poster, Wku Saudi Student Club

Student Organizations

Poster advertising Saudi National Day sponsored by the WKU Saudi Student Club.

The Abaya: Fashion, Religion, And Identity In A Globalized World, Elizabeth D. Shimek

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The abaya is a traditional robe worn by women in the Arab Gulf states as both a symbol of national identity and as a part of Islamic veiling customs. Over the last twenty years, partly due to exposure to Western couture fashion, the abaya has changed from a plain, voluminous black robe to a unique signifier of personal taste through variations in fabrics, cuts, colors, and detailing. This study explores both the physical and symbolic changes the abaya (and the industry surrounding it) has undergone, as well as how these changes both reflect and provoke the conflicts in identity residents …

The Bionic Self: Unveiling The Phantom Of The East, Christopher J. Jarmark

English Theses

The existence of Palestine is a question that has haunted the East ever since Israel’s occupation laid roots there in the mid-twentieth century. Occupation allowed for Israel not only to conquer the land of Palestine for itself but also, through bloodied battles and harsh socio-political expectations, to squeeze the essence of cultural identity from the Palestinians. As the occupation stripped the cultural heritage from the Palestinians, they were placed into roles of refugees and exiles, leaving them to wander blankly with only the painfully scarred memories of what used to be their home and culture. Ghassan Kanafani and Sahar Khalifeh …

Monin, Bill (Sc 360), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 360. Letter, 23 September 1955, to Mr. and Mrs. Henry Baird, Bowling Green, Kentucky, from Bill Monin. Writing from Amman, Jordan, Monin tells of his sightseeing, interactions with local citizens, and of participating in an American Friends Service Committee international work camp.

“He Loves Drinking Old Wine From The Jug”: Some Remarks On Alcoholic Beverages In Syriac Literature Based On Secular And Religious Texts, Adam C. Mccollum

HMML Lectures

The history of alcoholic beverages in various cultures, including our own, has often been written. These investigations have looked at viticulture, brewing, distillation, and the economic and religious uses and effects of alcoholic beverages. Syriac literature, being somewhat of an arcane area of interest, has rarely—if ever!—entered into any of the discussions. It is, nevertheless, a corpus with a breadth wide both in size and subject matter, and there is no dearth of references to alcoholic beverages, their preparation, and use. This paper, based on both secular and religious texts in Syriac, most of them composed in a Muslim-majority culture, …

Voicing And Devoicing Rules In East And Southeast Asian Languages, Siyu C. Zhang

Honors College Theses

Languages are composed of sounds that are produced by the vocal organs. These sounds can be split into two categories, voiceless and voiced. In general, based upon the International Phonetic Alphabet, there are more voiced sounds possible than voiceless sounds, with vowels, nasals, and approximants inherently voiced. After analyzing the separate phonetic inventories of 9 Asian languages representative of the major Asian language families (Arabic, Burmese, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Tamil, Turkish, Vietnamese), it was found that all of them except Mandarin Chinese had far more voiced sounds than voiceless sounds as well. After isolating only stops and affricates, …

Prehistory To 1250: Languages, Abdulkareem Said Ramadan

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

The Hemic group includes the Egyptian and Coptic languages, the Libyan and Barbarian languages, the Koshtia languages, and the languages of the original inhabitants of the eastern part of Africa. [excerpt]

A Poet Of The Sikhs: Aesthetic Embodiment In The Poetry Of A Young And Elderly Bhai Vir Singh, Todd Curcuru

Honors Theses

Bhai Vir Singh, famous 19^th and 20^th century Sikh poet, writer, and scholar is remembered for his great literary achievements and proliferation of the Pubjabi language. Raised in the Punjab, India after the fall of the Sikh kingdom to the British, Vir Singh grew up in a time of religious turmoil due to Western influence. Joining the Singh Sabha reformation movement, he dedicated his life wholeheartedly to return contemporary Sikh identity to its foundational roots as present in the Sikh holy book, the Guru Granth.

Despite his desire to return to a fundamental Sikh identity, Bhai Vir Singh …

Ancient Iconic Texts And Scholarly Expertise, James W. Watts

Religion - All Scholarship

This essay probes the origins of iconic textuality in the ancient Near East, informed by post-colonial perspectives on iconic texts. The surviving art and texts from ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia exhibit at least four forms of iconic textuality: monumental inscriptions, portraits of scribes, displays and manipulations of ritual texts, and beliefs in heavenly texts. The spread of literacy did not displace the social prestige of scribal expertise that was established in antiquity. The every-growing number and complexity of texts accounts for the continuing cultural authority of scholarly expertise. The tension between expert and non-specialist uses of texts, however, explains scholarship’s …

Religion And The Evolution Of Democracy: A Revised Selectorate Model For The Arab Spring, Amir K. Bagherpour

CGU Theses & Dissertations

2011 was a seminal year in the history of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Popularly referred to as the Arab Spring, the region has experienced a wave of revolutions and instability. It can be classified in three broad categories within 2011: Uprisings that have resulted in the overthrow of standing regimes, uprisings that have failed to overthrow standing regimes, and states that have not experienced popular revolts. In the first category Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia have all experienced uprisings resulting in the respective departure of Muamar Gaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Zine Al Abidine Ben …

The Rhetoric Of Construction: A Comparative Case Study Of The Language Of The U.S. - Mexico And Israel - Palestine Border Walls, Jesse Adam Kapenga

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This research examines the language and rhetoric of fear used to justify the walls and fences built by the American government along the U.S. - Mexico border, and by the Israeli government around the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It focuses specifically on the rhetoric used by the head of government of each country (the American president and the Israeli prime minister) during the years 2001-2011 to explain and justify the construction of a physical barrier as a measure of national defense and self-preservation.