NES Graduate Studies

A guide for prospective graduate students

NES Most Frequently Asked Questions

Click on the following links for further information:

1.) Required Near Eastern Studies Departmental Fact Sheet
2.) General information on graduate studies at Princeton
3.) The Graduate School's Application and Guide to Graduate Admission, or write to:

Office of Graduate Admission
Princeton University
Graduate Admission Office
One Clio Hall
Princeton, NJ 08544
Phone 609-258-3034
Fax 609-258-7262
If you want to make informal inquiries to the Department of Near Eastern Studies, call Jim LaRegina at (609) 258-4281,

or write to:

Prof. Mark R. Cohen
Director of Graduate Studies
Near Eastern Studies Department
Jones Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J. 08544-1008

If you want to make informal inquiries to the Program in Near Eastern Studies, call
(609) 258-4272, or write to:

Prof. M. Sükrü Hanioglu
Director
Program in Near Eastern Studies
Jones Hall
Princeton University
Princeton, N.J. 08544-1008

Preface

If you are considering graduate work in Near Eastern Studies, this site should tell you most of what you need to know about the possibilities for such study at Princeton.

Princeton has considerable attractions to offer you. It has a large and well-known faculty, an unusually good library, four or five-year funding, and a pleasant small-town environment. (For those who find Princeton's low crime rate enervating, New York is only an hour away.) These are not, however, the factors that should weigh most heavily with you if and when you come to choose between Princeton and the handful of other American universities offering comparable programs.

If you are an undergraduate at an American institution, you have probably been exposed to a large and frequently changing cast of faculty. Graduate life is different: graduate students spend most of their years of study working closely with two or three faculty at most. Choosing them is more important than choosing the institution they happen to belong to.

The core of this particular site is accordingly the faculty profiles. You should read them all, since taken together they tell you a great deal about the character and resources of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton. It is for this reason that we have included not just full-time faculty in the Near Eastern Studies Department, but also part-time faculty, emeriti, and faculty in other departments. You should, however, pay special attention to the profiles of the Department's full-time faculty. If there are two or three faculty members whose interests and approaches mesh with yours, apply for admission to the Department.

To help you explore the interests of relevant faculty, we have included a section entitled "representative publications" in the profile of each full-time member of the Department. If you want to know us better, the first thing that you can do is to read some of what we have written.
You can find the on-line application at https://apply.embark.com/Grad/Princeton/29/ or print the application from their website at http://gradschool.princeton.edu/admission/applicants/forms/. ; simply follow the instructions. We will read the materials you submit with care. Among other things, we shall be looking for evidence that you have already directed some time and effort to Near Eastern Studies at the undergraduate level. We also need to see that you have demonstrated the linguistic ability needed to acquire a Near Eastern Language. If you have already began to study one, so much the better.
As part of the admission process, we invite all short-listed applicants to visit Princeton for a weekend in February, for interviews with faculty, seminars in which the applicants give brief presentations on some research topic of interest to them, and meetings with current graduate students. The visit affords an opportunity for better acquaintance, and may therefore be to the candidate's advantage. It is not, however, a necessary condition of admission. We offer partial reimbursement of travel expenses, and provide meals and accomodation with current graduate students.


The Role of the Program

The Program in Near Eastern Studies admits students to a two-year course of study leading to a Master of Arts degree. This program is intended for students preparing for a non-academic career, for example in diplomacy, government service, business, or the media.
The Program does not admit students to a Ph.D. program; but students already admitted to a Ph.D. granting department (whether the Department of Near Eastern Studies or an appropriate disciplinary department) can, after entrance, opt to affiliate with the Program while retaining their departmental status. This is appropriate for students in the Departments of Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Economics, History, Politics, Sociology, or the Woodrow Wilson School, and for those in the Department of Near Eastern Studies whose interests are primarily modern.


Ph.D. Study in the Department

Ph.D. study in the Department of Near Eastern Studies falls into two parts: before and after the General Examination, commonly known as "Generals". A student usually takes Generals about two years after admission, though this period can be as little as a year or as much as three years.
Prior to taking Generals, a student takes courses. Click here for a formal listing of the Department's graduate courses, or here for a list of courses  (this should “read for a complete list of all NES courses)” which are offered during the current semester. 

Most of these will be graduate seminars offered by Departmental faculty, but students are encouraged to take courses related to their academic interests in other departments. For example, taking a course in European history can improve career prospects, and at the same time serve to introduce a student to state-of-the-art historical methods. There are few rules dictating a student's choice of courses. Good course selection means holding a balance between obtaining a wide general competence in Near Eastern studies and focusing on a specialized interest which the successful student will eventually turn into a dissertation topic. While there is no formal requirement that a student take a given number of courses each term, but three or four graduate-level courses is a normal load. At the end of each academic year each student must formally apply for readmission, and the student's record in course-work is then carefully considered by the Department.

Graduate students also take undergraduate courses where appropriate. Most language instruction up to third-year level takes place in undergraduate courses. In addition, certain other undergraduate courses may be taken by graduate students with suitable supplementary requirements. There may be a separate precept for graduates, additional readings, or more substantial papers. Click for examples of undergraduate courses recently taken by graduates in this way. Graduate students are encouraged to take appropriate courses in other departments.

Arrangements with New York University allow our graduate students to attend courses there for credit and the Department is normally able to reimburse the cost of travel.

The Department lays great emphasis on linguistic training. Before taking Generals, every student must demonstrate a research-level competence in a Near Eastern language (normally Hebrew, Arabic, Persian or Turkish), together with a reading knowledge of at least one major European language of scholarship. Students are encouraged to to take advantage of possibilities offered through Near Eastern Studies for developing their language skills by taking summer courses or spending a year in the Middle East or North Africa.

Generals represents the rite of passage from course-work to research. After taking Generals, the student embarks on a dissertation under the guidance of an adviser who is a specialist in the field in question. The adviser does not have to be a member of the Department, but may be a member of the Program faculty. It is not uncommon for a student to have two advisers; one, for example, might be a political scientist, and the other an area specialist. Many students at this point in their careers spend a year in research abroad, before returning to Princeton to complete their research and writing.


Faculty

At any given time the Department has around thirteen full-time faculty. This permits broader coverage of the field than is possible at most American universities. Please click for the profiles of each of the full-time Departmental faculty, together with part-time faculty, emeriti, and Program faculty in other departments. Our emeriti often remain easily accessible to students.


The Library

The Princeton University Near East Collections contain some 170,000 books and manuscripts in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish, and constitute one of the major assemblages of Near Eastern research materials in the United States. Most extensive are the Arabic holdings with over 85,000 printed books and 12,000 manuscripts - a manuscript collection unmatched in any other U.S. library. There are, in addition, approximately 27,000 Persian, 20,000 Turkish and Ottoman, and 26,000 modern and Rabbinic Hebrew printed books, together with several hundred Persian and Ottoman manuscripts, and a small collection of Ottoman documents.
All areas of classical Islamic civilization are well represented, with an emphasis on literary, historical, legal and religious texts. The collections are also strong in contemporary Near Eastern publications. Current books and periodicals are acquired on a regular basis from all the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, as are major newspapers. All told, the Library receives well in excess of 1,000 serial publications relating to the Near East in Near Eastern and Western languages.

The collections are at present housed in the Firestone Library. The Near East reading room is also located in Firestone.

There are, at the present time, eight full-time library professionals who work on the Near East Collections. These include Dr. James W. Weinberger, the Curator of the Near East Collections, a Near East Order Librarian, and the Near East Cataloguing Team, comprised of six cataloguers. In addition, there are a number of support staff.


Some Practical Matters

Financial support. University fellowship support is normally given for four or five years to students who make satisfactory progress, thus sparing them the need to teach to make ends meet during this period. By the same token, students are expected to complete their dissertations within five years of admission; those who do not can continue their degree candidacy, but are not eligible for further financial support through the University.

Teaching opportunities. Though students do not need to teach, they are encouraged to do so as part of their professional training. The number of vacancies for graduate instructors depends on undergraduate enrollment in Near Eastern courses, and this is unpredictable. However, most students who wish to teach get at least one opportunity to do so during their time at Princeton. Newly admitted graduates are not usually employed as instructors, but are encouraged to sit in on undergraduate courses in which they hope to teach at a later stage.

Advising. The adviser of all newly-admitted Department students is automatically the faculty member who is currently Director of Graduate Studies, while Program students are advised by the Program Director. Over the course of the first year of graduate study, as the student's interests become clearer, an appropriate faculty member takes over the role of adviser. The final choice of a dissertation adviser is made just prior to Generals, in the light of the student's research plans.


Other Activities in the Department and Program

The Department does not actively prevent a student living the life of a recluse, but it offers numerous alternatives, beginning with the Departmental Reception held each September.
The central event in the communal life of the Department and Program is the weekly brown-bag lunch. Currently this takes place each Wednesdsay during the teaching semester at noon. Speakers may be faculty ( including emeriti) in the Department or Program, other Princeton faculty, visitors from elsewhere in this country or from abroad - particularly from the Middle East. The brown-bag format provides the opportunity for a short talk and a lively discussion, often centering on matters of topical interest.

There are frequent public lectures by outside speakers. Many of these are organized by the Department or Program; others take place at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, which is located a short walk from the Department, and elsewhere in the University.

The Department and Program have many visitors. Some are short-term. Others may stay as long as a semester or a year, and teach courses at graduate level while they are at Princeton. Either way, they are a resource which graduate students can and should make use of.


The Department organizes

research seminars: currently we are using a grant from the Mellon Foundation to hold a series of seminars with a distinctive format. Scholars from outside the University are invited to send a written paper in advance; the paper is then discussed by the seminar the week before the author's visit, and graduate students are assigned tasks researching particular aspects of the paper. When the speaker arrives the following week, he or she gives a brief introduction to the paper, after which a prolonged discussion takes place, conducted mostly by graduate students.

weekly Arabic lecture series: the lecture and discussion are alike in Arabic. ("Arabic" here means Modern Standard Arabic. We also have a course in colloquial Arabic for those who wish to acquire a vernacular.)

In response to the need felt frequently by graduate students in the past, the Department has recently remodeled an office into a Near Eastern Studies Lounge. Located in 126 Palmer, this facility is open to both Department and Program students and faculty. In addition to providing a gathering place, it contains telephone, telefax, and computer facilities for student usage. Student mailboxes are located in the lounge, and important notices concerning job opportunities, conferences, seminars, and fellowships are posted on its bulletin boards. Coffee is available, as are current issues of at least one daily newspaper in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian and Turkish. Students are also encouraged to make use of the lounge for Graduate Student Committee meetings. For internal communication and dissemination of departmental news, the Department also maintains an electronic list 'NESChat'.


M. Münir Ertegün Foundation for Turkish Studies

Near Eastern Studies has recently been named the recipient of a $3.5 million endowment designed to foster and strengthen the Turkish Studies component of its offerings. The "M. Münir Ertegün Foundation for Turkish Studies" was endowed by Ahmet and Mica Ertegün and is directed by Professor Sukru Hanioglu. Among other activities it allows us to bring a specialist in various aspects of Turkish studies each year as a Visiting Professor, provides for the financing of an annual conference and makes possible funding for three graduate students in Turkish studies.


The Cairo Geniza Computer Project

In 1985, the Department inaugurated its Cairo Geniza Computer Project, under the direction of Professor Mark R. Cohen. The Cairo Geniza contains thousands of letters, court records, marriage contracts, lists, and other documentary treasures, preserved for centuries in a large discard chamber in what is today known as the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat (Old Cairo). Written in Hebrew or Judaeo-Arabic (Arabic in Hebrew letters), with a small number in Arabic language and script, the Geniza documents constitute an unmediated source for the reconstruction of what the late Professor S. D. Goitein called the "Mediterranean Society" of Jews, Muslims, and Christians of the high Middle Ages.

The goal of the project is to create a machine-readable full-text database of the documentary Geniza that can be searched, using keywords, for information on Jewish and general Mediterranean social and economic life in the 11th-13th centuries. Thus far well over 2000 texts have been entered into the database, and the project is seeking funding to complete the database and to apply to it a sophisticated automated information-retrieval system and eventually to open the database to general use throughout the world through available telecommunications networks.