By Kathryn Medill
How do we find out what students have learned – with an exam, or something else? Depending on the content and goals of a course, students may be able to internalize their new knowledge even better through a creative project or by joining a real scholarly conversation. Whether that means re-enacting a battle, role-playing as servers in an international restaurant, presenting a sales pitch for an ancient burial ground, writing and performing skits, collecting oral histories through interviews, creating wonderful art, or translating sources for new audiences, students enjoy these assignments, and their professors love them too! Here are a few of the creative projects you might find in a MELC class.
Time Travel
MELC 201, Introduction to the Ancient Near East, and MELC 202, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible
Dr. Kathryn Medill
In several of my courses, I use the idea of time travel to create course assignments.
In MELC 201, we take a tour of the history of the ancient Middle East—Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, the Hittites, Persia, Israel and Judah—from the invention of writing to the rise of the Persian Empire. Every week, students think themselves into these ancient worlds with time travel logs. As historical researchers for the Time Travel Bureau, they go back to Babylon (or Egypt, or elsewhere) and report on what they’ve seen. The last time this course was offered, students helped to build the pyramids, escaped bands of robbers in the mountains, argued with the locals about Sennacherib’s campaigns in Canaan, were recruited as spies by the Assyrian Intelligence Service, and more!
MELC 202 introduces the Hebrew Bible. At one point in the quarter, we explore ancient Israelite daily life and important historical sites in a Time Travel Tour Fair. Students work in pairs to represent time travel tour companies, creating flyers for their chosen topic or site, and presenting them to their classmates in a grand activities fair.
Engaging with Media
MELC 243A [not the permanent course number], Afghanistan Beyond the Headlines
Dr. Aria Fani
Students created amazing final projects for this course as they engaged with the art, literature and music of Afghanistan. They created playlists and book lists with insightful commentary, designed websites, translated tales, collected oral histories, made paintings, and even recorded podcasts!
Translating for Real Archives
MODHEB 408, “Modern Hebrew Prose”
Dr. Naomi Sokoloff
In recent years, MELC’s Modern Hebrew classes have engaged in a number of translation projects. This kind of group activity offers rich rewards: students at different skill levels can work collaboratively -- learners, native speakers, and near-native speakers all bring their own strengths to the project while sharpening their proficiency in Hebrew and learning how that language has changed over time. In addition, working in teams, students grapple with a variety of perspectives and so come to appreciate that translators always face options and, necessarily, make semantic and aesthetic choices. A hands-on task creates a valuable opportunity to wrestle with translation theory. Working on translation provides practice at editing, revising, and receiving feedback from others. The project also results in a tangible product and sense of accomplishment.
In 2021, UW students translated chapters from a memorial book commemorating Jewish life in a Ukrainian town destroyed during the Nazi Holocaust. Jews who escaped before the catastrophe or somehow managed to survive it compiled hundreds of such Yizkor books after WWII, each one focusing on a particular place. This kind of text usually consists of personal reminiscences, anecdotes about local customs and/or characters, folklore associated with a town or region, accounts of what happened during the genocide, photos, and more. Our students, along with Prof. Sokoloff and Prof. Hadar Khazzam-Horovitz, worked on the Mizoch Book, published in 1961. The translations from Hebrew to English have been published online on JewishGen.org, an organization devoted to genealogy and affiliated with the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
In 2023, students, together with Sokoloff and Khazzam-Horovitz, translated testimonies of Holocaust survivors Shifra Ben Nun and Elchanan Ben Nun. The class worked with written transcripts and also with video from the Yad Vashem archive in consultation with Shifra’s daughter. Michal Ben Nun shared her family’s history with us and can now pass down an English version of her parents’ stories to coming generations.
Additional student projects in MELC focus on memorial books from Hungary and other locations in Eastern Europe. All UW students with Hebrew skills at the third year level and above are welcome try their hand at translation. If interested, please contact Prof. Sokoloff!
Re-enacting an Ancient Battle
MELC 350, “Archaeology of Ancient Middle Eastern Warfare and Empire”
Dr. Stephanie Selover
As the midterm for MELC 350, students re-enacted the famous Battle of Kadesh, fought in 1274 BCE between New Kingdom Egypt and the Hittites of Anatolia for control over Syria. This is the first battle in history where detailed battle plans and reported numbers of combatants on both sides are known.
Students were each assigned a specific role in the battle, from King Ramses II of Egypt himself, to foot soldiers and charioteers, with the class split evenly between Hittites and Egyptians. Students created their own armor and weapons from construction paper, sticks, and pipe cleaners. The battle, fought outside in Grieg Garden, was held twice, with each side running the reenactment to show different outcomes, all based on the same textual references. Students then wrote up the story of their character, recounting the battle from their point of view.