Alumni & Friends

Recent Alumni News

Jocelyn Hendrickson, who completed a BA in our department along with a BA in Comparative Religion in 1999, has been awarded the Middle East Medievalists Book Prize for 2023. Dr. Hendrickson is currently Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Alberta. Her book, Leaving Iberia: Islamic Law and Christian Conquest in North West Africa, was published by Harvard University Press. Combining legal theory with social history, It focuses on legal opinions (fatwas) from Al-Andalus… Read more
Read more
Faculty Updates Canan Bolel Presented “The Foreigner Within: Ashkenazi Butchers, Sephardic Jews and Imageries of Foreignness in the Late Ottoman Empire” at Jews amidst the Embers of the Ottoman Empire, University of Washington, Seattle. May 21-22.  Presented “The Unlikelihood of Wholeness” for Prof. Andrew Nestingen’s “The Nobel Prize in Literature” course on 1981 Nobel Laureate in Literature Elias Canetti. Presented “No Place for Mazalto: Female Insanity and… Read more
This year our department has had a special occasion for self-reflection: a Program Review, as is required of all academic units at UW every ten years. Among other things, the review process calls for a self-study report assessing how we are doing and how we have fared in the past decade. In our deliberations, we are noting multiple significant changes the department has undergone since our last review – including a change of departmental name. Previously we were Near Eastern Languages and… Read more
Dr. Mamoun Sakkal designed the original NELC logo in 1997, and we thank him now for providing us an updated MELC design. He became a full time Arabic type designer after receiving his PhD from the Near and Middle Eastern Studies Interdisciplinary program at UW in 2010, and he has served as an affiliate instructor in our department. Dr. Sakkal has lectured on Islamic art, Arabic calligraphy, and Arabic typography at universities and conferences in the United States, Canada, England, Dubai,… Read more
Husky Giving Day Success! On April 7, Husky Giving Day, NELC raised $2400!  Thanks to all the donors who contributed to our Friends of NELC Fund, and special thanks to the anonymous donor who matched the first $1000 in contributions. Your support helps the department thrive and support our educational mission
On October 2, Dr. Jere Bacharach, professor emeritus of history at UW, gave a public lecture through the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) called, “Excavating Fustat, Cairo, Egypt.” The lecture introduced both the history of excavation at the site in Fustat as well as the findings of the excavations. By Erin Kelleher, NELC MA student. Erin works on Near and Middle Eastern intellectual history Professor Bacharach explained first that Fustat was continuously occupied from pre-… Read more
NELC alumnus Ali Igmen recently received a generous award from the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. The “International Public Service Award” recognizes of his outstanding service to young scholars of Central Eurasia. Professor Igmen has hosted many Central Eurasian scholars from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Georgia at California State University, Long Beach.  Igmen also mentors and serves on masters and doctoral committees for American and European… Read more
As a part of the ARCE Lecture series, Dr. Mark Lehner presented a talk on October 2, 2018 about last year's AERA excavations for the Lost City of the Pyramids, next to Heit al-Ghurab, or Wall of Crow. In his well attended talk,  Dr. Lehner discussed work in the daily life of the ancient city of Khuf… Read more
Friday, May 18, 20182:30–5:00 p.m.Thomson Hall, Rm. 317University of Washington-SeattleFree and open to the public Graduate students in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilization; the Middle East Studies Program, Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies; and the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Near and Middle Eastern Studies will present their research in this annual conference. 2018 Graduate Student Conference is organized by Pablo Jairo Tutillo (MA student, MEC… Read more
Read more
On March 13, 2013, Morgan Cassell, a Seattle native and University of Washington alumna, was awarded a 2013 Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellowship following a highly competitive nationwide contest. The Rangel Fellowship, funded by the U.S. Department of State and managed by the Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center at Howard University, supports extraordinary individuals who want to pursue a career in the U.S. Foreign Service. The Director of the Rangel Program, Patricia… Read more
Share