News and Announcements

Haberl Charles Photo

Dr. Häberl is an Associate Professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL). He was born and raised in the State of New Jersey, where he has lived for most of his life, but received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University.

The undergraduate courses he teaches address subjects such as Middle Eastern languages and literatures (including Arabic and Aramaic), folklore, and minorities in the Middle East. These courses include "Crossroads: Classical Literatures of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia" and "Introduction to Middle Eastern Folklore".

To learn more about Professor Haberl, please click here.

His most recent book (pictured) is his critical edition, translation, and commentary on the Mandaean Book of John with James McGrath, Ph. D.

Dr. Selim is an Associate Professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL).

Dr. Selim is an award-winning literary translator. She is the recipient of the Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation (2009), the University of Arkansas Translation of Arabic Literature Award (2012) and the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Grant (2018). She is currently working on an English translation of Jordanian author Ghalib Halasa’s 1987 novel Sultana.

Her research focuses mainly on modern Arabic Literature in Egypt and the Levant, with a particular interest in narrative genres like the novel and short story; comparative theories of fiction, and the politics of translation practice in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

To learn more about Professor Selim, please click here.

Her most recent book, Popular Fiction, Translation and the Nadha in Egypt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) is on the cultural and literary politics surrounding the translation of the novel into Arabic at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Preetha Mani is an Assistant Professor at the Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures (AMESALL). Her current book project titled "The Idea of Indian Literature: Gender, Genre, and Comparative Method," examines Hindi and Tamil short story writing between the 1930s and 1960s to explore how representations of the Indian woman were used to shape ideas of regional and national identity, and experiences of belonging, in the aftermath of Indian Independence. She teaches undergraduate courses including "Introduction to the Literatures of South Asia" and "Women Writers of South Asia ".

To learn more about Professor Mani, please click here.

Her recent article "What Was So New about the New Story? Modernist Realism in the Hindi Nayī Kahānī" can be found here.

Presented by: Professor Partha Chatterjee

The Department of American Studies announces scholarships of up to $300 for declared American Studies or Race and Ethnic Studies (CCRES) minors majoring in Africana Studies, AMESALL, Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies (LHCS) or Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) to be awarded in Fall and Spring 2014-15 AY.

The scholarship recognizes declared American Studies or CCRES minors who have demonstrated scholarly promise and commitment to the interdisciplinary study of culture and global diversity.

Lauren Weber for the Wall Street Journal | May 15, 2014

Parents, don’t despair. Even if your child spends four years of college reading Hungarian poetry or delving deep into the Faulkner oeuvre, he or she can still earn a decent salary shortly after packing up the senior-year dorm room.

So says the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which reports that the top-paying liberal arts majors for 2014 graduates are foreign languages and literature (average starting salary $46,900) and English ($42,200). The results are based on job offers that students accepted earlier this year and were reported by employers in February 2014 primarily through a variety of government surveys.

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