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NEWS

04/24/2006 - The Chronicle of HIgher Education: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
Link

03/25/2006 - The UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology
Link

08/01/2005 - The Andrew W. Mellon Fellowships in Humanistic Studies
Link

06/28/2005 - UCLA Today: Prof. Willeke Wendrich
Link

05/05/2005 - Dr. Anahid Keshishian
Received Distinguished Lecturer Award. Details

3/21/2005 - The 3rd Annual Wep-Waut In Westwood
Ancient Egypt at UCLA.

10/28/2004 -
Dr. Robert Englund Featured in UCLA Magazine
UCLA Magazine has an upcoming issue featuring Dr. Robert Englund. A PDF can be downloaded here.

07/23/2004 - Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute Endows New Graduate Fellowship in Persian Studies for NELC Ph.D. Students
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA is pleased to announce the endowment of the Roshan Fellowship in Graduate Studies. The fellowship has been made possible by a generous gift from Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute (www.roshan-institute.org). This fellowship is earmarked for Ph.D. students working in any aspect of Persian language and literature and Iranian culture and civilization, broadly defined. The first award of this graduate fellowship will be for the 2005-06 academic year; applications are due December 15, 2004. See the NELC www site (http://www.nelc.ucla.edu/Financial_Aid.htm) for application details.

05/04/2004 - Fedwa Malti-Douglas elected to American Philosophical Society
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Fedwa Malti-Douglas, the Martha C. Kraft Professor of Humanities at Indiana University Bloomington, has been elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the country. Malti-Douglas is only the fourth IU faculty member to receive this honor.

"As an immigrant and a naturalized citizen, I feel privileged to be a part of America's most exclusive and oldest learned society," said Malti-Douglas, a native of Lebanon who also is a professor of gender studies and comparative literature, and an adjunct professor of law at IUB. "I have always tried to push back the boundaries of the fields in which I worked, in both my teaching and my research. Hence, I find it validating personally for me that after having received the highest honors available in the Arab world, I should now be similarly recognized in the United States."

Previous IU honorees include the late geneticist Marcus Rhoades (elected in 1962), Distinguished Professor of Medicine Lawrence Einhorn (2001) and the late IU President Herman B Wells (1964).

The APS, which was founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1743, recognizes extraordinary achievements in five classes of academic disciplines: mathematical and physical sciences; biological sciences; social sciences; humanities; and the arts, professions, and public and private affairs. Malti-Douglas is one of 10 new resident members in the humanities class. The APS has 912 current members, including 766 resident members and 146 foreign members.

This year's inductees include such notables as Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Washington Post chairman Donald Graham, award-winning author and historian David McCullough and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor Noam Chomsky.

Malti-Douglas' intellectual focus has been on visual and verbal narratives, in both high and popular culture, especially as these intersect with issues of marginality, disability, gender and the body. Her work spans centuries and continents, exploring a wide range of subjects including classical literature, medieval history, Arabo-Islamic writing, gender relations, feminism, sexism, and privacy and disability law.

Malti-Douglas began her career as a medievalist and then turned her attention to the contemporary Middle East and North Africa, as well as to the immigrant populations in France and Belgium. In recent years, she has broadened her research area to include Europe, Latin America and the United States.

Malti-Douglas is the author of The Starr Report Disrobed (Columbia University Press, 2000), which earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination, and Men, Women and God(s), which was chosen as a Centennial Book by the University of California Press in 1995. Her co-authored book Arab Comic Strips (Indiana University Press, 1994) was named a Reader's Catalog Selection (one of the Best Books in Print) by The New York Review of Books' Reader's Catalog. Additionally, her editorial writing has been published in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune.

Malti-Douglas has delivered annual, named and endowed lectures, served on editorial boards and visiting committees, and received numerous grants and awards, including a $100,000 award in 1997 from the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences.

The American Philosophical Society promotes useful knowledge in the sciences and humanities through excellence in scholarly research, professional meetings, publications, library resources and community outreach. Its membership has included some of the world's greatest thinkers, such as John J. Audubon, Robert Fulton, Charles Darwin, Thomas Edison, Alexander von Humboldt, Louis Pasteur, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, George C. Marshall, Linus Pauling, Marie Curie and Margaret Mead. Over 200 members of the society have received the Nobel Prize.

Members are encouraged to participate in the society's fellowship, publications and committees and to attend bi-annual general meetings, during which they discuss current topics in history, science and the arts.

Malti-Douglas is looking forward to joining the discussion.

"The great debates of our age -- about artificial intelligence, about the manipulation of the genome, about new definitions of gender, of marriage and religion, even of liberty and security, and the clash of cultures -- all these debates involve central questions in the humanities," she said.

To speak to Malti-Douglas, contact Ryan Piurek, IU Media Relations, at 812-855-5393 or rpiurek@indiana.edu.
(taken from Indiana University news site:
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/1475.html)

04/28/2004 - Dr. Robert Englund Wins Prestigious Lyman Award
Read all about it here.

04/14/2004 - Madeleine A. Fitzgerald Wins Distinguished Chancellor's Award for
Postdoctoral Research for 2003
Dr. Madeleine Fitzgerald was recently honored as the recipient of the distinguished UCLA Chancellor's Award for Postdoctoral Research for 2003.  This $3,000 award is reserved for especially accomplished UCLA postdoctoral fellows in recognition of their outstanding research. This prize was established in 1998 to acknowledge the remarkable contributions and integral role of our postdoctoral fellows to the research mission of the university.

Dr. Fitzgerald has played a leading role in implementing an online catalog of all cuneiform inscriptions, an important advance in cuneiform studies.  As a result of her work, the National Science Foundation/Max Planck Society-sponsored Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative now offers online resources and access tools for the analysis of nearly one million lines of ancient texts in a format that can be used by both specialists and generalists.  Several large cultural heritage institutions use the project's standards.  Dr. Fitzgerald has also helped to establish ASCII and XML standards for cuneiform encoding.  She is now working on an automatic text composite generator for the literary and lexical record of Babylonia, which will fulfill a myriad of functions, including, including a data mining component.  She received her PhD in Assyriology from Yale University.

04/13/2004 - NELC Presents Lectures on the Early History of Medicine
Prof. Markham J. Geller of University College in London will offer four lectures on the early history of medicine during the week of April 19, 2004.

1) Monday, the 19th of April: An Introduction to Babylonian Medicine
2) Tuesday, the 20th of April: Medicine and the Babylonian Talmud
3) Wednesday, the 21st of April: Babylonian and Egyptian Medicine
4) Friday, the 23rd of April: Babylonian and Greek Medicine

Mark Geller, Professor of Semitic Languages at University College, is one of the world's leading experts on the ancient Near East, specializing in Sumerian and Akkadian magical literature and Babylonian medical texts. His publications range from books and articles on early science to mythology and Sumerian grammar, dealing with cuneiform texts from the mid-third to the end of the first millennium B.C.  All lectures will be held in Public Policy 1234, from 4:00 to 5:00 PM.  Admission is free.

Sponsors:  UCLA School of Medicine, UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the UCLA Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative

03/01/2004 - NELC Presents "Egypt and the Biblical World"
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA is pleased to announce their participation in a series of lectures to be given by UCLA professors Willemina Wendrich, Robert Mullins, Jacco Dieleman, William Schniedewind, and Antonio Loprieno.

Until recent times, the stones of archaeology have been a silent witness to the dramas of the past as recorded in the Bible. With advances in archaeology and breakthroughs in understanding Ancient Egyptian writing with its neighbors in the Leant has been expanded and enriched.  What does the record now tell us about Egypt and the Biblical World? Leading experts shed new light on the exodus of Hebrews from Egypt under Moses, the political role of Egypt in the ancient Canaan, cultural exchange within the region, and much more.

The lecture will take place on Saturday, March 6, 2004 from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. on the UCLA Campus, 39 Haines Hall.  Credit is available (.75 units) for UCLA students.  Visit www.uclaextension.edu or call 310-825-2272 for details.  Call 310-825-8871 to register.

11/11/2003 - "Redhouse Prize Comes to the Turkic Section of NELC for 3rd Time in a Row"
The Turkic section of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures is pleased to announce that Mr. Chuen-Fung Wong, a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, has won the James W. Redhouse Student Prize for Best Progress in Turkish Language for the academic year 2002-2003.
This is the third time one of our students has received this award that is given annually to one student in each of four regions of the United States and Canada by AATT (the American Association of Teachers of Turkic Languages) and the Turkish Studies Association. Awardees may be graduates or undergraduates but must have completed a full one-year course at any level of modern Turkish or Ottoman at a university.

Mr. Wong, who is now in the second year Turkish class, studied Elementary Turkish at UCLA to prepare for future study of the Uighur language, which he needs for research into the musical culture of the Uighur people in Xinjiang, a province of China that the Uighur people regard as their motherland and call Şarkî (Eastern) Turkistan, He traveled to that country on a fellowship from the UCLA Center for Chinese Studies to study the Uighur language at Xinjiang University in Summer 2003. His impressions and some fascinating pictures that he took on this journey can be found on his webpage (http://www.geocities.com/wongchuenfung/xjpics).

Our other UCLA students who had previously won the same prize were Mr. Stephen Wilson (2001), a doctoral student formerly in Linguistics and now in the Neuroscience Interdepartmental Program, and Ms. Natalie Oberstein (2002), a doctoral student in Indo-European linguistics.

10/23/2003 - "NELC Presents Lecture by Professor Bruce Zuckerman"
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA is pleased to announce their sponsorship of a lecture to be given by University of Southern California Associate Professor of  Hebrew Bible Dr. Bruce Zuckerman entitled "Pots and Alphabets: Refractions of Reflections on Typological Method."  The lecture will take place on Wednesday, October 29, 2003 from 11AM-1PM in the NELC Department Library (Kinsey 382).

10/20/2003 - "New Position in Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Early Judaism Approved"
A search for an assistant professor in the "Archaeology of Ancient Israel and Early Judaism" has been approved effective July 1, 2005. For full details, see the job description.

10/15/2003 - "NELC Presents Lecture by Professor Hans Nissen"
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA is pleased to announce their sponsorship of a lecture to be given by Prof. Hans J. Nissen of Free University of Berlin entitled "The Emergence of Art and Writing in the Ancient Near East."  The lecture will take place on Wed., Oct. 22, 2003 at 3 P.M., in Fowler A222. (flyer)

9/12/2003 -"NELC Announces Search for Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies"
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA has announced an open-rank search for the Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies.  Applications should be sent to the department by Oct. 1, 2003 for an appointment for the fall quarter 2004.
(read full announcement and job description)

9/10/2003 - "NELC Department BBQ"
Don't miss the annual NELC Dept. BBQ at the Chair's house on Sept. 28th, 2003 from 4-7 p.m.  All graduate students, research associates, staff, faculty, and their significant others are invited.  Contact Diane AbuGheida to RSVP.

5/27/2003 - "Cuneiform Bits Become History Bytes"
Professor Robert Englund and his CDLI project are highlighted in the Los Angeles Times.

5/02/2003 - "The Archaeology and History of David and Solomon: The Great Debate"
Was there a David? Who was Solomon? What can we know about the origins of the ancient Israelite state from archaeology? How do the Bible and archaeology in the Middle East intersect? The "Great Debate" brings together Israel Finkelstein of University of Tel Aviv and Larry Stager of Harvard University, two of the major scholars, to discuss the archaeology and history of the early Israelite monarchy.
(read UCLA NELC release)

April 20, 2002 - "NELC Welcomes Dr. Jacco Dieleman"
The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures today announced the appointment of Dr. Jacco Dieleman as a member of the Egyptology faculty.

 

UCLA NELC contact information