Graduate Degree Program Description

Master Of Arts, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Graduate Program Goals

The Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures offers a program leading to the degree of Master of Arts with specializations in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish languages, linguistics, literatures, and cultures. Students may also pursue graduate study in these languages and a number of ancient Semitic languages, among them Aramaic, Syriac, and Ugaritic, in the context of other graduate programs at OSU. The Department welcomes inquiries about its program and invites the applications of serious students who are interested in pursuing an advanced degree.

The mission of the Department is the discovery, interpretation, dissemination, and preservation of human values created over a period of several millenia in an area which was one of the cradles of civilization. The Department offers the diversity and scope of an academic unit comprising faculty members, in four different language programs, whose teaching and research interests and specializations range from the ancient to the contemporary periods, and whose methodological pursuits span those of the profession at large. Perhaps even more striking, this diversity has been achieved within the context of what is nevertheless a small but growing and dynamic academic unit, affording the student an opportunity for close contact with faculty members which is not readily found elsewhere. The Department's strength, however, does not lie in mere pluralism, but in its firm commitment to the Humanities, as well as to meaningful innovation on all levels of professional activity.

Students are the prime beneficiaries of this commitment. The graduate curriculum accommodates generalist demands in these fields and makes possible the formulation, pursuit, and completion of specialized research projects. The Department strives to train the critical mind to contribute significantly to the profession as teacher and as scholar. To this end, and in order to facilitate intellectual exchange, the Department regularly sponsors and co-sponsors symposia and visits by guest lecturers in which faculty and students alike might share their work-in-progress in an informal setting. And the Department's mission is aided by the considerable resources available in other academic units and centers at The Ohio State University for the pursuit of graduate study in fields of the Humanities related to our own, for example, the Departments of History, Linguistics, and Comparative Studies; the Office of International Affairs; the Middle East Studies Center; and the Melton Center for Jewish Studies.