MELC Faculty and Student Updates

We are proud of the many accomplishments of our MELC community. Please join us in congratulating and recognizing all of our achievements over the last year.

MELC Student Updates:

Anaëlle Enders, Minor in Arabic:

• Winner of a UW President’s Medalist Award, 2023

Forrest Martin, M.A. Student:

• Accepted into the PhD program at Emory University in Jewish Studies, starting in the 2023-2024 academic year.

MELC Faculty Updates:

Canan Bolel:

• Awarded The Translation Studies Hub's new course development grant for her new Spring 2024 course, "Gulliver’s Travels Among Muslims and Jews." 

Terri DeYoung:

• Published a book chapter "On Arabic Poetry and the Graeco-Roman Classical Tradition,” in Brill’s Companion to Classical Reception and Modern World Poetry, Ed. Polina Tambakaki, Brill, 2022. It describes the influence (or lack thereof) of Greek literature on classical Arabic literature and the contrasting role Greek authors and mythology had post-World War II in the Arab world. It focuses particularly on the impact the figure of Odysseus had on the Arab imagining of Sinbad in modern Arabic poetry.
• Published a review of Rebecca Johnson's book ,  Stranger Fictions: A History of the Novel in Arabic Translation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2020. Cloth. 30.00 in Modern Language Quarterly (2022): 77-80.
• Newly appointed chair of the Book Awards (Hourani, Mernissi, and Keddie) Committee for the Middle East Studies Association 2021.

Aria Fani:

• Co-organized the Middle Persian Workshop, for MELC students and the community, on Friday, December 2, 2022, with speaker Professor Adam Benkato of U.C. Berkeley.
• Co-launched the MELC Mo Habib Translation Prize in Persian literature.
• Presented on his forthcoming book, Spaces Between Nations: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism, on November 2, 2022, at the University of Texas in Austin. He also gave an interview to The Daily Texan about his work on Afghan-Iranian literary relations. You can listen to their conversation here.
• Created an important new course, NEAR E 243,  “Afghanistan Beyond the Headlines” for the winter 2023 quarter. This course filled up completely in its inaugural quarter.

Kathryn Medill:

• Presented on the vexed question of “To the Altar or on the Altar?” on November 21, 2022, in the Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew / National Association of Professors of Hebrew session at the Society of Biblical Literature Annual Meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Scott Noegel:

• To celebrate the publication of Prof. Noegel’s new open access book, “Wordplay” in Ancient Near Eastern Texts, MELC will host a launch event on Monday, May 15th at 5:00, via Zoom. Further information on the event will be updated soon.
• Prof. Noegel has reached a major milestone this year, with over 100 articles in scholarly journals on various Hebrew Bible and Near Eastern Studies topics! This year, he has published:
•  “Enallage in Ugaritic Poetic Texts,” Ugarit Forschungen 53 (2021), pp. 197-207 (backdated, appeared in 2022).
•  “On the Dysphemistic Baal Names in 2 Samuel,” Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 48 (2022), pp. 25-41.
• “Scale Scriptitious: The Concentration of Divine Power in the Ancient Near East,” Talanta 53 (2021), in press.
• “Near Eastern Poetics in Callimachus’ Hymn to Apollo,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 1113 (2022), in press. Co-authored with James J. Clauss.
• “Hidden Waters: The Sounds of Sinking in the Song of the Sea.” in Vincent Beiler and Aaron Rubin, eds., Linguistic and Philological Studies of the Hebrew Bible and its Manuscripts in Honor of Gary A. Rendsburg (Studia Semitica Neerlandica; Leiden: Brill), in press.
• “Not So Black and White: On Hair, Skin, Horses, and Heat in the Hebrew Bible,” in Ellena Lyell, ed., Colour and Culture: Polychromy and Perception in the Hebrew Bible (The Hebrew Bible in Social Perspective; Bloomsbury: T&T Clark), in press.
• “From Rebellion and Death to Victory: On Appellative Paronomasia in Numbers 20-21,” in Advances in Ancient Biblical and Near Eastern Research, in press.
• “Hidden in Hides: An Unrecognized Motif of Deception in the Hebrew Bible,” in Yonatan S. Miller, ed., The Motif in Biblical Literature: Contours, Critiques, and New Horizons, in press.
• “‘To Make Them See Your Majesty’: The Visual Program of the ‘Poetical Stela’ of Thuthmosis III,” publication edited by Rita Lucarelli, et al., eds., in press.

Stephanie Selover:

• Published “‘Work/Life Balance’ in the Late Chalcolithic: Household Activities and Spatial Organization at Çadır Höyük.” In No Place Like Home: Ancient Near Eastern Houses and Households, Aaron Brody, Laura Battini and Sharon R. Steadman, eds. First author, co-Authored with Laurel Hackley and Sharon Steadman. Ancient Near Eastern Archaeology Series, Archaeopress, pp. 112-126.
• Invited speaker for the UW Department of Classics and AIA Puget Sound Annual Faculty Lecture, entitled “Excavating War: Violence, Power, and Urbanism in Prehistoric Anatolia," on March 4, 2023. The event was sponsored by the AIA Puget Sound, the UW Department of Classics, and the Seattle University College of Arts and Sciences, and Department of History.

Stephanie Selover