This course helps students attain a higher level of proficiency in modern Japanese through the extended use of the language in practical contexts. The class will be conducted mostly in Japanese.

The goal of this course is to help students achieve an advanced to superior level of proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic with an exposure to one Arabic colloquial variety using the four-skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening) approach. Students will read within a normal range of speed, listen to, discuss and respond in writing to authentic texts by writers from across the Arab world. Text types address a range of political, social, religious, and literary themes and represent a range of genres, styles, and periods.

A seminar on the eighteenth-century Chinese masterpiece The Story of the Stone and selected literary criticism in response to this work. Discussions will focus on love, gender-crossing, and women's supremacy and the paradoxical treatments of these themes in the novel. We will explore multiple aspects of these themes, including the sociopolitical, philosophical, and literary milieus of eighteenth-century China. We will also examine this novel in its relation to Chinese literary tradition in general and the generic conventions of premodern Chinese vernacular fiction in particular.

This year-long course introduces students to modern, spoken Hebrew by a systematic study of grammar and vocabulary. Emphasis will be placed on conversational Hebrew as it is spoken in Israel today. Some attention will be given to the cultural setting of modern Hebrew as well. No previous knowledge necessary.

This course provides a critical introduction to the writings contained in the Hebrew Bible (also known as the Old Testament). It investigates the social and historical context of the ancient Israelites, examines a range of ancient Near Eastern literature, and introduces the principal methods of biblical studies. Participants will read much of the Hebrew Bible as well as select non-Israelite sources.

This course emphasizes skills necessary for proficiency in reading, writing, and conversational Hebrew. It presents new grammatical concepts and vocabulary through texts about Jewish and Israeli culture and tradition, as well as popular culture and day-to-day life in modern Israel. Course material includes newspapers, films, music, and readings from Hebrew short stories and poetry. Starts a transition from simple/simplified Hebrew to a more literate one, and sharpens the distinction between different registers of the language.

A religious, cultural, and political history of one of the Western world's most enduringly important cities.

Martin Buber famously wrote that we must read the Bible 'as though it were something entirely unfamiliar, as though it had not been set before us ready-made.' Whether you come to the Bible from within a faith tradition or not, this course will ask you to do just that. We'll take a text that for more than two-thousand years has stood at the heart of the Western tradition and ask how we can approach that text today, from the place where you stand. What does it mean to read a sacred text? How has it been read by people situated both within and at the margins of Western culture?

Students will subscribe to this venerable and influential magazine and will closely examine the best items across departments, from the editorial board's short pieces on politics, to analytical articles, amusing vignettes, opinionated reviews and the famous cartoons (occasional readings will be drawn from the New Yorker's archive).

The four-skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) introduction to the Russian Language with the focus on communicative skills development. Major structural topics include pronunciation and intonation, all six cases, basic conjugation patterns, and verbal aspect. By the end of the course the students will be able to initiate and sustain conversation on basic topics, write short compositions, read short authentic texts and comprehend their meaning, develop an understanding of the Russian culture through watching films and listening to songs.