Recent News
On March 5, 2026, the Central Asian Student Association and the Ethnomusicology Society at UW hosted the Silk Road Music Concert at the Tateuchi East Asian Library to welcome spring and honor the rich history of the Silk Road cultures. Musicians honoring the Kazak, Kyrgyz, Persian, Turkmen, South Asian, and Uzbek traditions served as proud ambassadors of the Silk Road…
MELC calls for submissions for the third cycle of the Mo Habib Translation Prize in Persian Literature. Established in partnership with the Mo Habib Memorial Foundation and Deep Vellum Publishing in 2022, the prize seeks to enable the publication and dissemination of Persian literary works that stand on their own in engaging English translation. Hajar Hussaini won the last…
MELC is happy to announce its continued summer study program, Arabic Language & Culture in Morocco, under the direction of Prof. Amina Moujtahid.The program is open to students currently enrolled at UW and also UW Alumni. All former and current students of our first-year and second-year Arabic courses or equivalent and Arabic Media courses are encouraged to apply.Applications…
MELC Associate Professor Aria Fani, along with poet and translator Adeeba Shahid Talukder, has been awarded the prestigious MLA (Modern Language Association) Roth Translation Award for 2025, for their translation of Shape of Extinction: Poems by Bijan Jalali (Asemana Books, 2025). The book was also illustrated by MELC alumna Amelia Ossorio. The MLA award committee notes…
MELC Lecturer Dr. Lillian McCabe was recognized at the 2025 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) annual meeting, for the Malcolm H. Keer Dissertation Award, Honorable Mention for her dissertation, "Fakhr al-Din al-Rasi's (d. 606/1210) Book of the Hidden Secret and Its Reception."Please join our community in congratulating Dr. McCabe on this fantastic achievement!
As part of a literary residency honoring the late Iraj Khademi—beloved Washington State community organizer and poet—MELC welcomed poet-translator Adeeba Shahid Talukder and translator, librettist, and multidisciplinary artist Niloufar Talebi. On November 13 and 15, Third Place Books and the Elliott Bay Book Company hosted two vibrant evenings of Persian poetry to celebrate the launch of …
In collaboration with the Seattle Turkish Film Festival, Dr. Melike Yucel-Koc — who also serves on the Festival’s Film Selection Committee — organized and moderated an inspiring evening with Zuhal Olcay, one of Turkey’s most celebrated and influential performing artists at the University of Washington.The event, titled “Turkish Cinema Through an Artist’s Lens” offered an intimate and…
At the 59th Annual Conference of the Oral History Association (OHA, October 15–18 in Atlanta, Georgia), themed “Exploring Our American Stories,” Dr. Melike Yücel Koç from MELC's Turkish and Ottoman Studies Program, joined a national gathering of scholars, practitioners, and community historians to explore how oral histories shape the evolving meanings of American identity. Dr. Yücel Koç…
As part of TurkFest 2025 at the Armory Seattle Center, I had the pleasure of representing the University of Washington’s Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC) Department by leading an engaging session titled “Turkish 101.”The session began with an introduction to the MELC Department and Turkish&Ottoman Studies and its members, highlighting our commitment to cultural exchange and…
MELC is proud to announce that former MELC undergraduate and recent NMES PhD Corinna Nichols has been been selected to receive the Graduate School’s 2025 Distinguished Dissertation Award in the Humanities & Fine Arts category for her fantastic dissertation, “Entangled Identity: Control, and Depictions of Hair in the Ancient Near East.”
As a further confirmation of the high…