News

The Berkeley Workshop on Middle Persian Documents and Sealings is a virtual international meeting which brings together scholars to discuss, analyze, and move forward the study of the collections of Middle Persian documents and sealings originating from the Sasanian through early Islamic eras and regions including Egypt, central Iran, Tabarestan, and more. The workshop is planned with an orientation towards discussion and collaboration.

Emeritus professor Niek Veldhuis (ret. 2025) has been honored with a Festschrift entitled Scribal Worlds: Scholarship and Classification in Cuneiform Cultures featuring contributions from a number of his colleagues and students from Berkeley and further afield. The volume is now available open-access from UCL Press.

The MELC Department is pleased to announce the recent achievements of its graduate students and recent alumni

Graduate Students

The Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Berkeley invites applications for a pool of qualified temporary lecturers to teach courses in Arabic, Person, Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Modern Hebrew, Biblical Hebrew, Cuneiform, Hittite, Ancient Egyptian, Sumerian, Akkadian, Nubian and general Middle Eastern cultures should the need arise during Summer 2026, Fall 2026, Spring and Summer 2027 terms.

Division of Arts & Humanities article "The opportunities and complexities of studying Iran in 21st century America" features some of Professor Adam Benkato's recent work on Middle Persian documents and artifacts.

The American Philosophical Society has awarded MELC Emerita Professor Francesca Rochberg's recent book, Worldmaking and Cuneiform Antiquity, An Anthropology of Science the 2025 Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History. The Prize is awarded annually to an author whose book exhibits distinguished work in American or European cultural history.

Please join us in celebrating the life and career of Professor Niek Veldhuis on Monday, April 28, from 9AM to 3:30 PM in 470 Stephens Hall. Colleagues, students, and former students will deliver short papers and long appreciations in Professor Veldhuis's honor. Contact Benjamin Porter at bwporter@berkeley.edu with any questions.

The 2nd Berkeley Workshop on Middle Persian Documents & Sealings will take place online on October 10–11, 2024. This virtual workshop brings together scholars from around the world to discuss, analyze, and advance the study of the valuable, yet still under-appreciated, collections of Middle Persian texts and sealings stemming from late Sasanian and early Islamic Iran, the Levant, Central Asia, and Egypt.

Professor Persis Berlekamp will be teaching in the History of Art department this Fall semester as the Guitty Azarpay Visiting Professor.

 The MELC department mourns the passing of Ayla Esen Algar, longtime Lecturer of Turkish.

The MELC department mourns Professor Emerita Guitty Azarpay, esteemed colleague and member of the department between 1964 and 1994 (continuing as active emerita for another decade), who passed away in early April 2024.

The MELC department mourns Grace Martin Smith, longtime Lecturer of Turkish, who passed away in October at the age of 92.

MELC is excited to announce that Dr. Yonatan Binyam will join the MELC faculty as an assistant professor of Ancient Mediterranean & Ethiopic Studies starting in Fall 2024. This position is the first time that Berkeley will host a full-time faculty member with a specialization in Ethiopic Studies, and represents an anticipated and exciting expansion of MELC's coverage of the pre-modern world to also include antique to medieval eastern Africa and the Red Sea region.

Solmaz Sharif will give the 2023 Maziar Maghsoodnia Memorial Fund Reading on September 13, 2023 at 4pm in the David Brower Center, Tamalpais Room. Following, she will be in conversation with Lubna Safi.

The MELC department mourns Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, an esteemed colleague and long-time member of the Department, who passed away in July, aged 92.

MELC is delighted to announce that Nora Jacobsen Ben Hammed is joining the department as Assistant Professor of Islamic Thought beginning in Fall 2023.

Annmarie Rose Delgado, a double major in Anthropology and MELC, has been awarded a prestigious Haas Scholarship for the 23-24 academic year for her project "Commemorating Childhood: the Bioarchaeology and Mortuary Archaeology at Tell el-Mazar, Jordan".

Francesca Rochberg, Catherine and William L. Magistretti Distinguished Professor (emerita) of Near Eastern Studies, was awarded the California Institute of Technology’s prestigious Francis Bacon Award in the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology for 2022.

On March 17 and 18, 2023, the Center of Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) with the support of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), Center for Science, Technology, Medicine and Society (CSTMS), the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), the Department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC), and the Italian Institute of Culture, San Francisco hosted the multidisciplinary and multi-media conference The Past into the Future: Af