Dissertations in MELC

PhD dissertations submitted in the MELC department are listed below. Until 2021, degrees were awarded in "Near Eastern Studies" or "Near Eastern Religions." Prior to the early 1970s, degrees were awarded in "Near Eastern Languages."

Where possible, links to online repositories such as UC eScholarship or ProQuest have been provided.

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2020s

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1990s

1999

Barbanes, Eleanor. Heartland and province: Urban and rural settlement in the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Goodarzi-Tabrizi, Shoki. The worked bone remains of Hallan Cemi Tepesi, an early Neolithic site in Southeastern Turkey.

Kroenke, Karin Roberta. Type II river crafts: Description and classification of ancient Egyptian model boats of the first intermediate period through the New Kingdom.

Ross, Jennifer Carol. The golden ruler: Precious metals and political development in the third millennium B.C. Near East.

Wong, Diana Pickworth. Stamp seals of the ancient Yemen.

Yaqub, Nadia Gail. Drinking from the well of poetry: Tradition, composition, and identity in the oral Palestinian poetry duel.

1998

Angali, Koorosh. Afsan i buz ud muy: 'The fable of the goat and the date-palm'.

Brookes, Douglas Scott. Tables of delicacies concerning the rules of social gatherings: An annotated translation of Gelibolulu Mustafa Ali’s Meva’idu’n- Nefa’is fi Kava’idi’l-Mecalis.

Hildenbrand, Michael Dean. Structure and theology in the holiness code.

Simonds, Matthew Wiley. Ali b. Maymun: An early 16th Century Sufi saint and critic of the Ulama with an edition of Alwan al-Hamawi’s Mujli al-huzn an al-mahzun fi manaqib al-shaykh al-sayyid al-sharif Abi al-Hasan Ali b. Maymun.

1997

Estes, Allen Leland. Enforcement practices in Ur III Lagash and 18th Century BC Mari.

Johnson, Willis Harrison. Between Christians and Jews: The formation of anti-Jewish stereotypes in Medieval England.

Mehendale, Sanjyot, Begram: New perspectives on the ivory and bone carvings(link is external)
Advisors: Guitty Azarpay & David Stronach

Mendoza, Barbara. Iconography and chronological development of the fisherman and fowler in ancient Egyptian tomb painting and relief: A contrast between tomb owner and marsh laborer.

Samman, Antoine. Ancient Syrian society in the age of Iamhad (ca. 2000-1500 B.C.): Archaeological and glyptic studies.

Shih, Shang-Ying. Death in Deir el-Medina: A psychological perspective.

von Schlegell, Barbara Rosenow. Sufism in the Ottoman Arab world: Shaykh ‘Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731).

1996

Afshar, Yashar. Cultural and linguistic transition from Sasanian Persia to Islamic Iran.

Greaves, Sheldon Wilde. The power of the word in the ancient Near East.

Seidel, Jonathan Lee. Studies in ancient Jewish magic.

Taheri, Zahra Haghighi. The depiction of women in Persian ethical texts.

Taniguchi, Shoyo. A systematic structure of ethics founded on causal conditionality (paticcasamuppada): Ethics from the pali nikaya textual point of view.

1995

Barbanes, Eleanor Rose. Neo-Assyrian town planning.

Noelle-Karimi, Christine. The interaction between state and tribe in nineteenth-century Afghanistan: The reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan (1826-1863).

1994

Bonogofsky, Michelle A. Gifts for the Netherworld: Objects excavated from the royal cemetery at Ur.

Codella, Kim Christopher. Distribution of chlorite carved vessels in the third millennium B.C.: Evidence for trade and exchange between Mesopotamia and its eastern neighbors.

Friedman, Renee Frances. Predynastic settlement ceramics of Upper Egypt: A comparative study of the ceramics of Hemamieh, Nagada, and Hierakonpolis.

Moore, Teresa Robin. The Good God Amenhotep: The deified king as a focus of popular religion during the Egyptian New Kingdom

Podzorski, Patricia Victoria. The Northern cemetery at Ballas Upper Egypt: A study of the Middle and Late Predynastic remains.

1993

Astren, Fred David. History, historicization, and historical claims in Karaite Jewish literature.

Fakour, Mehrdad. An Islamic canon of proportion: A study on the depiction of the human form in early Islamic art.

Hayes, Christine Elizabeth. Between the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmuds: Accounting for Halakhic difference in selected Sugyot from Tractate Avodah Zarah.

Stahl, Nanette, The flawed liminal moment: Between law and narrative in the Bible(link is external)
Advisor: Robert Alter

Tsoffar, Ruth. Koshering the body: Female ritual discourse among the San Francisco Bay Area Karaites.

Zorn, Jeffrey Ralph, Tell en-Nasbeh: A re-evaluation of the architecture and stratigraphy of the early Bronze Age, Iron Age and later periods, 4 vols.(link is external)
Advisor: David Stronach

1992

Atai, Mohammad Farhad. The Sending of Iranian students to Europe 1811-1906.(link is external)

Bedal, Leigh-Ann. The Neo-Assyrian bracelet: A study of its evolution, function and symbolism.

Bernstein, Marc Steven. The Story of Our Master Joseph: Intertextuality in Judaism and Islam.

Burden, Jeffrey Christopher. The architecture of the White Chapel of Senuseret I: The making of a Middle Kingdom monument.

Edzard, Lutz. Polygenesis and entropy: An alternative model of linguistic evolution applied to Semitic linguistics.

Gane, Roy Edwin. Ritual dynamic structure: Systems theory and ritual syntax applied to selected ancient Israelite, Babylonian and Hittite festival days.

Harrington, Hannah Karajian. The biblical foundations of the impurity systems of the Qumran Sectaries and the Rabbis.

Harrington, Lori Dee. Naga-ed-Der Cemetry 100: A sample of cranial material and its context.

Rattray, Susan. The tense-mood-aspect system of biblical Hebrew, with special emphasis on 1 & 2 Samuel.

Shoemaker, Kenneth Wayne. Speaker and audience participants in Micah: Aspects of prophetic discourse.

Wong, Diana Pickworth. South Arabian bovine stelae: On the function and significance of theomorphic statues from Qataban.

1991

Bikai, Pierre Michel. The cedar of Lebanon: Archaeological and dendrochronological perspectives.

Bolt, Dianna Gail. Burial in an ancient northern Mesopotamian town: The evidence from Tell Mohammed 'Arab.

Chyet, Michael L. "And a thornbush sprang up between them": Studies on Mem u Zin, a Kurdish romance.

Godlas, Alan Arthur. The Ara’is al-bayan: The mystical Qur'anic exegesis of Ruzbihan al-Baqli.

Jamzadeh, Parivash. The Achaemenid throne: Its significance and its legacy.

Knudsen, Joan Ann. A corpus of amulets from Cemetery 500 at El Ahaiwah.

Kuwabara, Toshikazu. The Netherworld in Sumero-Akkadian literature.

Ross, Jennifer Carol. A Late Bronze Age pottery workshop at Hazor.

Snyder, Barbara Wootten. Combat myth in the apocalypse: The liturgy of the Day of the Lord and the dedication of the Heavenly Temple.

Zournatzi, Antigoni. Evagoras I, Athens and Persia: ca. 412 to 387/6 B.C.

1990

Adler, Elaine June. The background for the metaphor of covenant as marriage in the Hebrew Bible.

Gane, Constance Ellen. The worshipper before symbols on selected Neo-Babylonian stamp seals.

Lumsden, Stephen Paul. Symbols of power: Hittite royal iconography in seals.(link is external)

Marchant, Anne Jones. Old Babylonian tablets from Larsa in the Lowie Museum of Anthropology.

Mosher, Malcolm. The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead in the Late Period: A study of revisions evident in evolving vignettes, and the possible chronological or geographical implications for differing versions of vignettes.

Roehrig, Catharine Hershey. The Eighteenth Dynasty titles royal nurse (mn't nswt), royal tutor (mn't nswt), and foster brother/sister of the lord of the two lands (sn/sn't mn' n nb t3wy).

Samman, Antoine. The Kingdom of Iamhad: Epigraphic evidence for a major power in the Near East in the first half of the second millennium B.C.

Keddie, Nikki, The Impact of the West on Iranian Social History (History, 1955)
Rentz Jr., George S., Muhammad ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhâb (1703/04-1792) and the Beginnings of Unitarian Empire in Arabia (History, 1948)
Hazam, John George, Arab Nationalism and Anglo-French Imperialism on the Eve of the World War(link is external) (History, 1932)

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