Lecturer in Arabic, Arabic Language Program Coordinator
After receiving her B.A. in Arabic from UC Berkeley, Elsa Elmahdy moved to Egypt to study at the American University in Cairo. There she received her M.A. in Arabic Studies, focusing on Arabic literature, followed by an M.A. in Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL). Elsa’s current research project in Arabic language pedagogy is entitled “Teacher and Student Beliefs about Written Corrective Feedback on Student Writing in the Arabic Foreign Language Classroom.”
Born in Shiraz, Iran. I first started to learn German after High school on my own and quickly grew to love the German language, and eventually decided to earn two bachelor’s degrees at once: one in “German Language and Literature” from the SBU and one in the “Applied Translation” (German-Persian) from the IAUCTB in Tehran. I continued my education at the TBU in Tehran receiving a M.A. in ”German Pedagogy” (equivalent to DaF). I wrote my MA thesis on “Kafka’s parables and how to apply them in Teaching German at University level". I began my career working as a lecturer in diverse...
Dalit Gvirtsman holds a Master's in Cultural Studies with honors from the Open University of Israel and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Tel Aviv University with a Bachelor's Degree in Interdisciplinary Studies of Humanities, focusing on literature and education. Since moving to the Bay Area in 1999, Dalit taught Hebrew at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School and Wornick Jewish Day School. She has been a Hebrew lecturer at the University of San Francisco since 2019, and taught at Stanford University since 2023. Dalit has been teaching at the Hebrew San Francisco: Ulpan since summer 2016, and...
Jenna Kemp is a lecturer in Hebrew Bible in the department of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures. She holds an MA in biblical studies from the Graduate Theological Union (2014) and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley from the MELC department in the area of Hebrew Bible with a designated emphasis in Jewish Studies (2021). Before joining the faculty in MELC, she held a postdoc position at Universität Basel in the Theologische Fakultät (2021-2024), working on a project entitled “Transforming Memories of Collective Violence in the Hebrew Bible,” an Eccelenza research project funded by the Swiss...
Dr. Sanjyot Mehendale is an archaeologist specializing in the trade and cultural exchange networks of Eurasia, commonly known as the Silk Roads. She received her Doctorandus degree in Indo-Iranian art and archaeology from the Rijksuniversiteit Leiden in The Netherlands. In 1992, she joined the Near Eastern Studies Department’s doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley, focusing on early Common Era central Asia and the ancient site of Begram, Afghanistan. After completing her dissertation in 1997, she began teaching central Asia and Silk Roads courses as a Lecturer in Near...
Rexhina Ndoci holds a PhD in Linguistics from the Ohio State University. She specializes in sociolinguistics and language contact with particular emphasis on the relationship between language variation and ethnoracial identities. Rexhina has additionally conducted research on politeness phenomena in Modern Greek and Albanian, intradialectal variation, contact-induced language change, and the complex linguistic repertoires of mobile individuals. She employs both quantitative and qualitative methods in her research, and she has organized and participated in various public-facing events...
