Why study a language?
In 2017 the American Academy of Arts and Sciences released a report about why languages matter, especially when seeking a job. The report starts with “While English continues to be the lingua franca for world trade and diplomacy, there is an emerging consensus among leaders in business and politics, teachers, scientists, and community members that proficiency in English is not sufficient to meet the nation’s needs in a shrinking world, nor the needs of individual citizens who interact with other peoples and cultures more than at any other time in human history.”
The Department of Middle Eastern Languages offers introductory, intermediate, and advanced courses in Arabic that can lead to completing a minor in Arabic. We also offer introductory and intermediate courses in modern Hebrew. In translation we teach a variety of courses on classical and modern Arabic literature, on music in the Middle East, on film in a range of Arab societies, and more specifically on fiction and film in Israel/ Palestine. Students can also study regional Jewish cultural history and memory.