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2018

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Articles 1 - 30 of 38

Full-Text Articles in Near Eastern Languages and Societies

Rethinking Stabilization In Eastern Syria: Toward A Human Security Framework, Steven Heydemann Dec 2018

Rethinking Stabilization In Eastern Syria: Toward A Human Security Framework, Steven Heydemann

Middle East Studies: Faculty Publications

As the United States faces important decisions regarding its future role in Syria’s conflict, a new Atlantic Council report by Dr. Steven Heydemann, “Rethinking Stabilization in Eastern Syria: Toward a Human Security Framework,” provides important context, analysis, and strategic policy recommendations.

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To The Arab Nation: After “Damn You,” You Are No Longer Worthy Of Greetings, Houssem Ben Lazreg Dec 2018

To The Arab Nation: After “Damn You,” You Are No Longer Worthy Of Greetings, Houssem Ben Lazreg

Transference

Translated from Arabic by Houssem Ben Lazreg.

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Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018 Dec 2018

Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

Transference

Complete issue with covers of Transference Vol. 6, Fall 2018

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Worldwide Waters: Laurasian Flood Myths And Their Connections, Logan A. Mcdonald Nov 2018

Worldwide Waters: Laurasian Flood Myths And Their Connections, Logan A. Mcdonald

Honors College Theses

In various cultures, stories of great floods have arisen, and many scholars agree that the writers of these stories based their accounts on an actual flooding event. However, these narratives vary in characters, plot, and even their meaning to each culture. This thesis examines several Laurasian flood narratives, perhaps the most ancient narratives in Western literature, including those of the Egyptian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Sumerian, and Israeli cultures. These civilizations all rose and existed in close proximity to one another, which makes the historicity of a flooding event more probable. A structural examination of the narratives and a comparison of their …

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Syriac Chant And The Limits Of Modality, Sarah Bakker Kellogg Oct 2018

Syriac Chant And The Limits Of Modality, Sarah Bakker Kellogg

Yale Journal of Music & Religion

A book review is presented for Sense and Sadness: Syriac Chant in Aleppo, by Tala Jarjour. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. 250 pp. ISBN: 978-0-190-63525-1.

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Facilitating Community Participation With Palestine Refugees: An Exploratory Study Of Unrwa, Tiffany Rene Baccus Oct 2018

Facilitating Community Participation With Palestine Refugees: An Exploratory Study Of Unrwa, Tiffany Rene Baccus

Capstone Collection

Community participation plays an important role in reversing the traditional power dynamic between service providers and beneficiaries. However, the level of community participation facilitated by organizations in their initiatives often varies greatly. This study sought to understand how and to what extent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) West Bank Field Office can best facilitate community participation with Palestine refugees through its initiatives. Data collection took place at two levels: the strategic and camp level. The strategic level included interviews with a representative from the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s Department of Refugee Affairs (DORA) as well as nine staff …

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Film Review: L’Insulte (The Insult), Renee Michelle Ragin Oct 2018

Film Review: L’Insulte (The Insult), Renee Michelle Ragin

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Though the civil war (1975-1990) has long since ended, Ziad Doueiri’s contemporary Lebanon remains embroiled in conflict. In The Insult, a personal dispute between two individuals on either side of an ethno-political divide threatens to reignite national conflict. Under normal circumstances, such a storyline might seem improbable, but the realities of the post-war environment in Lebanon render it plausible. With a series of provocative, if difficult to answer questions, The Insult joins a robust corpus of post-1990 Lebanese films meditating on what, if anything, it means to be “post-war” in Lebanon.

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Integrated Mental Health Care In Education For Syrian Refugees: An Exploratory Study, Emily Goldstein Oct 2018

Integrated Mental Health Care In Education For Syrian Refugees: An Exploratory Study, Emily Goldstein

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Trauma-inducing experiences during conflict can significantly impede the ability to function and effectively learn in the classroom; thus, it is essential to integrate mental health services into the school setting for refugee populations. This study investigated the state of integrated mental healthcare for Syrian refugees in Jordan by surveying Syrian students on their attitudes towards seeking mental health and interviewing educators on their classroom practices. The scope of the study was extremely limited, as data was collected on only 21 students and 5 educators in one school and a number of biases could have skewed the results. It was found …

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The Impact Of Foreign Involvement On Political Reform Organizations In Jordan, Sravya Tadepalli Oct 2018

The Impact Of Foreign Involvement On Political Reform Organizations In Jordan, Sravya Tadepalli

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper assesses the impact of foreign involvement on the effectiveness of political reform organizations in Jordan. Through the qualitative analysis of the democratization work of completely foreign-funded international organizations, partially foreign-funded Jordanian organizations, and Jordanian organizations that do not receive foreign funding, derived from several interviews conducted with democracy practitioners in international and local NGOs, political activists, scholars, and others, this paper examines the effect of foreign involvement on organizational strategies, credibility, and effectiveness, ultimately arguing that foreign involvement (and conversely, the lack thereof) has several effects on the way political reform organizations have carried out their activities. This …

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Women’S Divorce Rights In Jordan: Legal Rights And Cultural Challenges, Helen David Oct 2018

Women’S Divorce Rights In Jordan: Legal Rights And Cultural Challenges, Helen David

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This research aims to examine women’s divorce rights in Jordan examining the topic both through their legal rights as well as through the cultural challenges and stigma that divorced women face. The research is focused specifically on the rights of Muslim women, who have to file for divorce through the Shari’a court system, in Jordan that are Jordanian nationals. The literature used in the research provides background insight into Jordan’s tribal system, family law in Jordan, and psychological theories that relate to group therapy and self-efficacy in divorced women. The researcher hypothesizes that despite the many socio-economic and legal reasons …

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Declining Versus Increasing Access To American Aviation Technology: Syria And Saudi Arabia In The 20th Century, Andrea L. Stanton Sep 2018

Declining Versus Increasing Access To American Aviation Technology: Syria And Saudi Arabia In The 20th Century, Andrea L. Stanton

Religious Studies: Faculty Scholarship

This article uses Syria and Saudi Arabia as contrasting examples of how different Arab states interacted with United States aviation technology, involving aviation technology companies, airline corporations, and government officials as they worked to develop civil and military aviation capabilities after World War II. It considers the role played by airline companies like TWA, the impact of the shift from military to commercial aviation technology among companies like Boeing, and the fallout from regional political developments like the Iranian Revolution. These factors all placed varying constraints on the two countries’ ability to draw upon American sources for airplanes and other …

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Oral Fluency Through Writing, Janae Campbell, Stephen J. Moody Sep 2018

Oral Fluency Through Writing, Janae Campbell, Stephen J. Moody

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Learning a second language is difficult. While learning, writing and speaking are treated as though they are two totally separate things. It is evident that people do not speak the same way they write, but that does not mean that speaking and writing should be divided. What if it was possible to create written assignments that would help increase the oral fluency of the learner? This would make home-work assignments more efficient by optimizing how students use their time studying at home. It would take away the pressure of having to learn all verbal communications within the confines of the …

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Divining Gospel: Classifying Manuscripts Of John Used In Sortilege, Jeff Childers Sep 2018

Divining Gospel: Classifying Manuscripts Of John Used In Sortilege, Jeff Childers

Graduate School of Theology

The texts of Christian scripture find their way into a variety of ancient artifacts. The manuscript form has been the most widespread, yet manuscripts manifest distinct patterns of organization and structure according to their different purposes. Many include companion texts sharing the page with that of scripture—texts that gloss, provide commentary, give liturgical direction, or otherwise assist the reader in understanding or using scripture. In many instances, pages containing scripture have acquired additional texts over the years–e.g. marginal notes, corrections, claims of ownership, prayers, and fragments of other texts. One of the least well-studied phenomena is the sort of artifact …

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Waging War On The Womb: Women’S Bodies As Nationalist Symbols And Strategic Victims Of Violence In Susan Abulhawa’S Mornings In Jenin, Noora Badwan Aug 2018

Waging War On The Womb: Women’S Bodies As Nationalist Symbols And Strategic Victims Of Violence In Susan Abulhawa’S Mornings In Jenin, Noora Badwan

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Nationalism is a patriarchal construct that clearly delineates women’s roles in the social structure, and assigns female bodies specific roles in the nationalist, social, and political narratives, albeit passive ones; ironically, as integral to nationalism as women are, they are only ever pawns used by the state, never equal participants. They are often assigned the role of the mother figure who produces new citizens to populate the nation and who are expected to raise them to be “good citizens” and offer them up to the state as potential tools. The mother figure is a nationalist icon who is also often …

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"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian Mclaughlin Jul 2018

"Some Dreamers Of The Golden Dream": The Construction Of The Golden Age Myth(S) In The Age Of Ottoman Decline, Ian Mclaughlin

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

This paper considers the role and construction of golden age myths in seventeenth-century debates about how to renew the flagging Ottoman Empire. Policymakers and preachers prescribed radically different solutions based on which golden age they idealized—whether the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century or the reign of Sultan Suleiman in the sixteenth. Throughout most of the 1600s, the pendulum swung back and forth violently depending on which faction had the sultan’s ear. Charismatic mosque preachers like Kadizade Efendi whipped up Istanbul crowds against coffee, while advice writers such as Koçi Bey urged expelling “outsiders” from the military …

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Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai Jul 2018

Reaching Thai Buddhists And Those With A Background In Thai Buddhist Beliefs, Warren A. Shipton, Jared Wright, Tonya Wright, Nilubon Srisai

Journal of Adventist Mission Studies

"One of the greatest challenges for those working across cultures is to understand the unique features of the host culture and the dominant religious beliefs and practices found in the society represented. If this is to be done acceptably, the written and spoken language must be mastered and personal friendships formed with community members. Much damage has been done by Western missionaries arriving with preconceived ideas on evangelism taken from their home country and with an attitude of being holders of superior knowledge in many areas of thought beyond that held by the host culture. Catholic missionary activity has been …

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Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz Jun 2018

Data Mining Ancient Script Image Data Using Convolutional Neural Networks, Shruti Daggumati, Peter Revesz

School of Computing: Conference and Workshop Papers

The recent surge in ancient scripts has resulted in huge image libraries of ancient texts. Data mining of the collected images enables the study of the evolution of these ancient scripts. In particular, the origin of the Indus Valley script is highly debated. We use convolutional neural networks to test which Phoenician alphabet letters and Brahmi symbols are closest to the Indus Valley script symbols. Surprisingly, our analysis shows that overall the Phoenician alphabet is much closer than the Brahmi script to the Indus Valley script symbols.

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The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond Jun 2018

The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The subversion of East and West in Orhan Pamuk's novel, The White Castle" Adile Aslan seeks to show how Orhan Pamuk plays with the theme of East versus West in his third novel The White Castle (1985), with the aim of de-essentializing both concepts. In 1928, Perso-Arabic script, in use for centuries as the main writing system in the Ottoman Empire, was replaced with Latin alphabet (accompanied by an intensive Turkification of the Ottoman language in the coming years) as a part of a larger modernization-Westernization project in the new nation state, a move which effectively …

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Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear? Tools And Suggestions For Digital Data Protection, Jedidiah C. Anderson, Erik Skare, Courtney Dorroll May 2018

Nothing To Hide, Nothing To Fear? Tools And Suggestions For Digital Data Protection, Jedidiah C. Anderson, Erik Skare, Courtney Dorroll

The Qualitative Report

The developing cyber-infrastructure has provided new tools, methods, and opportunities to conduct research. However, the Snowden leaks and subsequent developments proved that the same infrastructure has made all-encompassing surveillance possible – posing new challenges for researchers when engaging with those they are obligated to protect. As the cyber-infrastructure simultaneously opens up new possibility-spaces for circumventing structures of surveillance, while drawing on the authors’ own experiences, this article presents a number of tools and suggestions that will aid the researcher to engage more responsibly and safely with the research subject digitally.

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Adapt Or Die! The Social And Economic Dynamics Of Japan’S Animation Industry, You Pan May 2018

Adapt Or Die! The Social And Economic Dynamics Of Japan’S Animation Industry, You Pan

Master's Projects and Capstones

This research explored and discussed about Japanese animation industry, past, present, and possibilities to a better future. While there is existing literature on Japanese animation, this research will focus on a case study that will discover the bright side of Japanese animation market, while addressing the existing problems within the animation industry or potential issues at present times. By illustrating the existing and potential issues as well as the bright side, the objective of this research is to help the Japanese animation industry to survive under the depressive economic environment. My research will identify reasons for low productivity of high …

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Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury May 2018

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

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Classical Literature And The Retroaction Of Socialist Ideology—The Sovietization Of A Medieval Georgian Epic Poem And Its Mysterious Author, Diego Benning Wang Apr 2018

Classical Literature And The Retroaction Of Socialist Ideology—The Sovietization Of A Medieval Georgian Epic Poem And Its Mysterious Author, Diego Benning Wang

Madison Historical Review

Shota Rustaveli, presumed author of the medieval Georgian epic poem vepkhistqaosani (The Knight in the Panther's Skin), was one of the most celebrated cultural and historical figures in Soviet Georgia. However, not much is known about Rustaveli apart from his work. In this essay, I argue that a series of policies under the Soviet government transformed Rustaveli into a national symbol of Georgia, but the celebration of Rustaveli and his poem scarcely deviated from the ideological guidelines of the Soviet state. In discussing the impact and legacy of the Soviet promotion of Rustaveli, I purport to highlight the "national in …

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Education And The Arab Spring: Resistance, Reform, And Democracy, Mohammed Abullatif Alharbi Apr 2018

Education And The Arab Spring: Resistance, Reform, And Democracy, Mohammed Abullatif Alharbi

Faculty Publications

The Arab Spring has brought about major changes in the Arab region in many aspects, including education. The researchers aim to present the state of education after the Arab Spring revolutions and compare it with what was before these revolutions. The book has been divided into three main sections. The first section discussed the state of education before the Arab Spring by highlighting some of the teachers’ practices in the classroom. The second section presents some calls for reforming youth education in countries such as Egypt, Yemen, and Tunisia. The last section, which contains three chapters, explores the education of …

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Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein Mar 2018

Using Wikipedia In Israel Studies Courses, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

Instructors of Israeli history or literature, like professors in other areas, complain about students’ use of Wikipedia—and with good reason. Unlike peer-reviewed scholarship, many Wikipedia articles contain information that is both incomplete and wrong. Most instructors will warn their students that relying on Wikipedia is a sure recipe for failing assignments. Yet there is a way to mobilize this giant encyclopedia for pedagogical purposes. When students in Israel Studies classes are assigned to edit Wikipedia articles, they achieve multiple goals: they gain critical reading skills, shape public knowledge about Israel, and engage in active learning. This article explains how to …

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This Is Home, John C. Lyden Jan 2018

This Is Home, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of This is Home (2018), directed by Alexandra Shiva.

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Øystein (Sten) Labianca, Oystein Labianca Jan 2018

Øystein (Sten) Labianca, Oystein Labianca

Spring 2018

"I am sure that many of you have seen information this academic year that refers to the 50th-anniversary celebrations for an archaeological dig site in Jordan. Or maybe it has just passed you by. Actually, it is a big deal. Over the Christmas break I had the opportunity to talk to one of the individuals who has been involved in this site since its early days. But the interview was about more than the dig in Jordan—it was about one of our faculty who has spent the vast majority of his career at Andrews University and, through that career, has …

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Civil War, Economic Governance & State Reconstruction In The Arab Middle East, Steven Heydemann Jan 2018

Civil War, Economic Governance & State Reconstruction In The Arab Middle East, Steven Heydemann

Middle East Studies: Faculty Publications

Civil wars currently underway in Libya, Syria, and Yemen demonstrate that patterns of economic governance during violent conflict exhibit significant continuity with prewar practices, raising important questions along three lines. First, violent conflict may disrupt prewar practices less than is often assumed. Second, continuity in governance highlights the limits of state fragility frameworks for postconflict reconstruction that view violent conflict as creating space for institutional reform. Third, continuity of prewar governance practices has important implications for the relationship between sovereignty, governance, and conflict resolution. Civil wars in the Middle East have not created conditions conducive to reconceptualizing sovereignty or decoupling …

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How To Learn To Read The Hebrew Bible, Without Points. With Exercises., William Penn Jan 2018

How To Learn To Read The Hebrew Bible, Without Points. With Exercises., William Penn

ATS Digital Resources

No abstract provided.

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An Alternative View On The Roll-Brimmed Hat, Lauren King Jan 2018

An Alternative View On The Roll-Brimmed Hat, Lauren King

The Larrie and Bobbi Weil Undergraduate Research Award

Why does Gudea wear the roll-brimmed hat? Neo-Sumerian period statues of Gudea, king of Lagash (c. 2100 BCE), were primarily designed to convey the leader’s piety before the gods. The traditional interpretation of the roll-brimmed hat suggests that this garment added to Gudea’s pious affect, serving as a humbler alternative to the divine horned-headdress worn by Naram-Sin, the last king of the previous Akkadian period. While acknowledging the less overtly ambitious quality of the roll-brimmed hat, I nevertheless argue that other potential meanings of this headgear have been overlooked. In particular, I take a materiality and haptic approach to propose …

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Introduction To Islamic Art & Architecture, Abby M. Kornfeld Jan 2018

Introduction To Islamic Art & Architecture, Abby M. Kornfeld

Open Educational Resources

This course surveys the foundations of Islamic art and architecture in the Middle East and then traces these artistic forms across the Mediterranean and into Central Asia. We will work our way from the seventh through the sixteenth centuries, studying everything from mosques to palaces, from holy texts to vividly depicted tales of love, friendship, and behavior, from shimmering mosaics to stuccoed vaults. Class discussion will be focused on the making, meanings, and social resonances of Islamic art. Together, we will work to define and redefine the term “Islamic Art,” as we consider the following topics: the religious, political, and …

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