The Department of Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures focuses on the deep historical ties between the many and varied cultures, religions, literatures, and languages of the Middle East (Afghanistan, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, United Arab Emirates), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia), and South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka). Having crossed such wide-ranging intellectual and regional boundaries for several decades, being interdisciplinary and inter-regional by our very nature, we teach at least six languages at any given time (currently, Arabic; Hebrew; Hindi; Persian; Sanskrit, and Urdu; languages spoken by 32% of the world’s population).

We have an impressive array of expertise and specialization among our faculty members: Language Pedagogy, Literary Studies, Linguistics, Islamic Studies, Comparative Literature, History, Media Studies, Anthropology, Film Studies, Philology, and Gender Studies.

We also have quite a heterogeneous faculty in terms of diverse demographics (American, Indian, Israeli, Iranian, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian, Pakistani, Yemeni).