Submitted by Kathryn McConaughy Medill
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What have our faculty, students, and alumni been doing this year? Scroll down to find out!
Faculty Updates
Melike Yucel-Koc
- Presented “Reimagining American Identity through Immigrant Narratives” at the 59th Annual Conference of the Oral History Association, held in Atlanta, Georgia (October 17, 2025). Her presentation, based on extensive interviews and archival materials, explored how oral histories from diverse immigrant communities contribute to evolving understandings of what it means to be “American,” highlighting the intersections of memory, migration, and belonging in contemporary America.
- Presented “Reshaping Local Histories through Oral Narratives: A Preliminary Study of Immigrant Experiences” at the MESA Conference in Washington, D.C. (November 23, 2025). This study contributes to diaspora and Middle Eastern studies by foregrounding the lived experiences of immigrants from Turkey in the U.S.—narratives typically absent from official historical records.
- Organized an event, Turkish Cinema through an artist’s lens: Zuhal Olcay in collaboration with Seattle Turkish Film Festival, on November 3rd, 2025 in Johnson Hall that brought the UW community and Turkish American community together. The event offered an inspiring exploration of Turkish cinema through the eyes of one of its most celebrated performers — Zuhal Olcay.
Mehari Worku
- Published “Jews, Their Scriptures and God’s Judgment in Giyorgis Saglawi’s Book of the Mystery,” in Ethiopia and the Judeo-Christian Tradition (Logos Verlag, 2025).
- Published “የአእላፋት ዝማሬ ምልክት ነው (The Melody of Myriads as a Symptom)” on Emmaus Presset (2026). Click to read Melody of Myriads.
Stephanie Selover
- Published “Rural Farmers, Climate Change, and Continued Archaeological Work at Çadır Höyük, Türkiye (2023–2024)” in Anatolica. Co-authored with Sharon Steadman, Jennifer Ross, Emrah Dinç, Anthony Lauricella, Laurel Hackley, Burcu Yıldırım, and Denız Erdem.
- Published “Holding Close, Letting Go: Burials and Belonging on the Chalcolithic Anatolian Plateau” in The Routledge Handbook of Prehistoric Burials in Southwest Asia, Karina Croucher and Jo-Hannah Plug, eds. Routledge, New York. Co-Authored with Burcu Yıldırım and Mary Kathryn Amiotte Beaulieu.
Scott Noegel
- Under consideration at a publisher: Ambiguity and Empire: A Literary Appreciation and Commentary for the Book of Daniel.
- Articles published or in press: “Eyelids of the Dawn,” in Andreas Johandi, ed., Biblical Job in the Literary Network of the Ancient Near East (Kasion-Publikationen zur ostmediterranen Antike; Münster: Zaphon, 2024), 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, 2004), 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,” in Rita Lucarelli, et al., eds., Rethinking the Visual Aesthetics of Ancient Egyptian Writing (Oxford: Archeopress Publishing), in press; “The Narrator in the Epics from Ugarit,” Ugarit Forschungen 54 (2023), in press, backdated; “Key Signs and Words in the Tale of Sinuhe,” Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections 46 (2025), pp. 23-40; “Multiple Meanings and Devices of Sound in the Book of Job,” in J. E. Harding, ed., Job (Themes and Issues in Biblical Studies; Sheffield: Equinox Publishing, 2025), 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; “Prophecy, Gastronomic Ghosts, and Oracular Flatulence: On the Substance of Spirit in Ancient Israel and Mesopotamia,” in Robin Baker, ed., Religion: The Bible and Ancient Mesopotamia, in press; “Ancient Near Eastern Poetic Repetition in the Light of Neuroscience,” in Nicla de Zorzi, ed., Volume Title to Be Determined (Workshop on Textual Repetition and Creativity in Ancient Mesopotamia, Israel, Egypt and China), in press; “Signs of Dream Divination in the Exagoge of Ezekiel, 68-89: Hypotexts, Tragedy, and Jewish Creativity in the Hellenistic Period,” Aitia 15 (2025), in press; “Taxonomic Approaches to Biblical Animals,” in Suzanna Millar, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Bible and Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press), in press.
Kathryn Medill
- Presented on “Goal-Marking across Time: Layers in Classical Biblical Hebrew?” at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in November 2025.
- Submitted an article for a festschrift (in press).
- Published reviews of Lauinger’s Labors of Idrimi, Cook’s The Biblical Hebrew Verb, and Hornkohl’s Diachronic Diversity in Classical Biblical Hebrew in Catholic Biblical Quarterly.
- Created a new course, “TXTDS 320: Ancient Media,” in cooperation with MELC and the Textual Studies Program.
Lillian McCabe
- Awarded the Malcolm H. Keer Award Honorable Mention by the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) in 2025 for her dissertation, “Fakhr al-Din al-Rasi's (d. 606/1210) Book of the Hidden Secret and Its Reception."
- Presented on “Translating Enchantment: Journeys of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī’s (d. 1210) Book of the Hidden Secret” at the University of Washington in November 2025.
Gary Martin
- Published “With What Level of Confidence Can We Construct an Archetype of Decalogue Texts from Hebrew Biblical Manuscripts?” Pages 55-94 in Urtext and Variance: The Quest for the Texts of the Hebrew Bible, edited by Rey, Schorch, and Robert-Hayek (Peeters, 2025).
Selim S. Kuru
- Presented online on “Şiir ve Hayat (Poetry and Life)” (October 23, 2025) as part of the Literature Series for UniQuir, an NGO that provides educational programs for LGBTQ Turkish university students.
- Co-organized the symposium Transregional Ruler Poetry with Dr. Christoph Neumann and Dr. Christine Czygan, held at Istanbul Oriental Institut on December 4–5, 2025.
- Presented “A Literary Collaboration in 1792 Istanbul: On the Istanbul University Manuscript No. 5502 (in Turkish)” at the First International Manuscripts Symposium, held in Istanbul on December 7–8, 2025. The paper examined the historical and intellectual context of an 18th-century Ottoman manuscript that brings together Enderunlu Fâzıl’s Hubânnâme and Zenânnâme.
Accepted an invitation to the Advisory Board of the British International Research Institutes (Link: BIRI) project Ottoman Mobilities and Interactions project (2025-2026).
- Presented “A Tale of Two Manuscripts: Men and Women of the World, Separated,” at the British Research Institute in Ankara (December 17, 2025). Link: A Tale of Two Manuscripts: Men and Women of the World, Separated - YouTube
Aria Fani
- Aria Fani and Adeeba Shahid Talukder won the MLA-Roth Translation Prize 2025 for their translation, Shape of Extinction: Poems by Bijan Jalali (Asemana Books, 2025).
- Won the Rene Wellek Prize for Best Book in Comparative Literature 2025 for his book Reading across Borders: Afghans, Iranians, and Literary Nationalism (University of Texas Press, 2024).
Annie Chen
- Presented “Participation and Dialectical Evolution of the Svoboda Diaries Project” at a panel entitled “Co‐Creation in Context: Participatory Approaches to Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage Work” at the virtual satellite meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology 2025 (December 11-12, 2025).
Canan Bolel:
- Won the Simpson Center: Collaborative Project Award, along with Liora Halperin, for their project West Coast Working Group on the Jews of the Maghrib and Middle East.
Student Updates
Remi Alidon (MELC major)
- Received a Bonderman Travel Fellowship
Griffin Hehmeyer (MELC minor)
- Named to the Husky 100
Meghan Huang
- Received the 2025 Zondervan Biblical Languages Award for Biblical Hebrew at UW
Alumni Updates
Corinna Nichols (PhD 2025, Near and Middle Eastern Studies)
- Received the Graduate School’s 2025 ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities and Fine Arts for her dissertation, “Entangled Identity: Control and Depictions of Hair in the Ancient Near East.”