This course is designed to help students develop the basic skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking Persian, while incorporating knowledge of the Persian culture. Language technologies will assist students while they learn the script and phonology of the Persian alphabet.

This course is intended to continue developing the students' skills in three modes of communcation: interprative, interpersonal, and presentational. They will also gain a deeper understanding of Persian cutlure, history, and traditions by listening and reading extra handouts and giving oral presentations. Students will learn to expand their vocabulary and use new terms in short essays as well.

This course will continue with objectives of Persian Level 2; to improve students language skills and deepen their understanding of the Persian culture, history, and tradition through a comparison with thier own cultural expereince. They achieve a higher level of skill through the three modes of communication introduced in Level 2.

This course will focus on developing linguistic accuracy and fluency in commuicative skill sin order to perform tasks that a native speaker carries out informal and informal situations. Students will have a variety of classroom activities (e.g. oral participation, class projects, role plays, interviews, journaling)

This course will continue to focus on the development and integration of students language skills at a more advanced level. It will also aim to broaden student's vocabulary to improve their spoken proficiency in a variety of communicative contexts and situations. At this level, students will read various texts and literally works from Persian poetry to understand the meaning and to improve comprehension of advanced level grammar forms and culture specific vocabulary.

In this advanced course, students will integrate their language skills from all previous levels. At this level, students will identify an area of interest in Persian culture, gather sources to prepare discussion and analysis, and demonstrate advanced levels of language comprehensions.

The topic and content of this special topics course are variable.

Through this class, students will read literature about the impact language has on interactions between different cultures. There is discussion of the differences in communication within and between various communities.

While giving an overview of the types of languages present in each area of the world, this course explores the composition and trends within and between language families. The course incorporates study of language structure differences as well as sociolinguistic variations.

Over the last several centuries, Eurasia’s domination by successive nomadic steppe empires (stretching from Europe to China) was displaced by new imperial challengers from the periphery (notably Russia, China, and Britain). This course examines the nature of that transition by charting the history of Eurasian empires, beginning with the Mongols in the thirteenth century and proceeding through the present day. From Ghenghis Khan to Tamerlane to Stalin; between Russian spies, Chinese armies, and the Taliban; spanning silk roads, great games, and more. The empires of the steppe were truly vast in scale, integrating territories usually studied in isolation from one another, and so this course provides important context for separate courses on Russia, Eastern Europe, China, and the Middle East. The chronological scope of this course is similarly epic, spanning over seven centuries, and thus placing in relief recurring themes related to empires in world history. The thematic emphasis is on geopolitical strategies for imperial rule, but the course will also examine culture, religion, and political economy. 

This course aims to introduce students to Islamic and Middle Eastern History from the time of the Prophet (ca. 600 C.E.) to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. We will proceed chronologically, focusing mainly on political events. However, a special emphasis will be given to the formation of the Islamic tradition, its evolution across different regions and cultures in time, and its interaction with other traditions. In the modern era, we will particularly explore the Islamic societies' political, cultural, and military encounter with the rising power of the West in the Middle East. In addition to the several historical processes and developments such as modernization, nation-building, Islamic fundamentalism and globalization, which have shaped the history of the Middle East in the last two centuries, our class discussions will also touch on the main theoretical perspectives that have stamped the studies of Islam and the Middle East. Here, concepts such as orientalism, defensive development, and modernity will constitute our main focus.