Oriental Institute, Room 212 • Professor Peter Dorman, Chair
• Paula Manzuk, Department Administrator
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An Introduction to the DepartmentThe languages and civilizations of the Near East have been a major part of the University's teaching and research commitment since its inception. William Rainey Harper, the University's founder and first president, was a Hebrew scholar and author of a grammar widely used in institutions of higher learning for more than three-quarters of a century. Research done at Chicago has helped to form the very basis of the modern disciplines of Assyriology, Egyptology, and ancient Near Eastern Archaeology. The creation of "Islamic Civilization" as a curriculum was effected at Chicago. In all these areas and related subfields a faculty of distinguished scholars now extends this tradition, keeping the University of Chicago at the forefront of worldwide developments in Near Eastern studies. Graduates of the Department have for decades been among the leading international experts in their fields. An interdisciplinary approach to learning is a characteristic of the Chicago intellectual tradition. In the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations students are encouraged to participate in courses, seminars, and workshops where they, as well as the NELC faculty, interact with their counterparts in anthropology, art history, classics, comparative literature, history, law, linguistics, political science, and religious studies. NELC also has a joint degree program with the Department of Linguistics. This
interdisciplinary and team
approach
is especially facilitated by the participation of many of the students
and faculty in the work of the University's Oriental Institute and
Center for Middle Eastern Studies. The Department also publishes the
Journal of Near Eastern Studies, which is one of the leading journals
in Ancient Near Eastern and Islamic studies. The Oriental InstituteThe Oriental Institute is a
research organization and museum devoted to the study of all aspects of
ancient Near Eastern civilizations. Founded as a part of the University
in 1919 by James Henry Breasted, the Institute is an internationally
recognized leader in research and scholarship on the archaeology,
philology, and history of the ancient Near East. Multi-volume
dictionaries of Akkadian, Hittite, and Demotic Egyptian are currently
in preparation. Oriental Institute scholars have conducted epigraphic,
architectural, and archaeological surveys throughout the Near East and
have excavated more than one hundred sites including early Neolithic
villages, Bronze Age towns, Mesopotamian cities, the Achaemenid capital
of Persepolis, and early Islamic towns on the Red Sea coast. From its
inception it has fostered projects that coordinate independent lines of
research involving the close collaboration of archaeologists, art
historians, and philologists. NELC faculty members in ancient Near
Eastern fields constitute the core of the Oriental Institute staff, and
many NELC students are involved in Oriental Institute projects, both in
Chicago and abroad. Several active archaeological field expeditions are
sponsored by the Oriental Institute and are directed by NELC faculty
members. These include the Abydos expedition in Egypt, the Hamoukar expedition in
Syria, and the Zincirli and Kerkenes expeditions in Turkey. |
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