When Muhammad began his mission in Arabia in the early 7th century, he preached his new revelation not only to the pagan Arabs among whom he was raised but also to the Jewish (and Christian) community among whom he came to live. How did the Jews of Muhammad’s day react? What did they think of...

Ziony Zevit is Distinguished Professor of Biblical Literature and Northwest Semitic Languages at the American Jewish University since 1974. Prior to joining AJU, Dr. Zevit taught at the University of Haifa, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and UC Berkeley. He has held visiting professorships at Univ. of Pennsylvania, UCLA, USC,...

The Center for the Study of Religion invites students to participate in Heart & Sole, an innovative workshop designed to educate students about religious diversity, help them explore their own beliefs and values, and teach the skills needed to engage in inter-religious dialogue with their peers on campus. Join us in our effort to make Heart...

The Hebrew Aljamiado Research Group of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies are offering a workshop in learning to read 14th-16th century Judeo-Spanish texts written using the Hebrew alphabet: Hebrew “aljamiado” writing. Attendees will also learn about the cultural context of Hebrew aljamiado writing in the Iberian...

This paper will open with an overview of recent work by narratologists and analytical philosophers on the ontology of fictional characters. From there it proceeds to arguments about the ontological status of characters who appear in fictionalizing narratives such as the Odyssey or the Ramayana who are simultaneously the objects of religious belief. I suggest...

The Center for the Study of Religion invites students to participate in Heart & Sole, an innovative workshop designed to educate students about religious diversity, help them explore their own beliefs and values, and teach the skills needed to engage in inter-religious dialogue with their peers on campus. Join us in our effort to make...

Jonathan Brown (Associate Professor of Islamic Civilization, Georgetown) and Matthew Fisher (Associate Professor of English, UCLA) will discuss The Life of Ibn Hanbal by Ibn al-Jawzi (d. 1200), recently translated by Michael Cooperson (Professor of Arabic, NELC, UCLA). This translation, which won the 2017 Sheikh Hamad Prize for Translation and Cultural Understanding, recounts the life...

Thomas Schneider is Professor of Egyptology and Near Eastern Studies at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. He studied at Zurich, Basel, and Paris, earning a Master’s degree (Lizentiat), a doctorate, and a habilitation in Egyptology at the University of Basel. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Vienna (1999) and the...

Students who participated in Heart & Sole during the winter quarter are invited to Heart & Sole 2.0! Join your peers on Thursday April 12 from 5:30-7pm for a walk on campus to continue the conversation about beliefs and values AND also a enjoy delicious dinner together! Please RSVP by Tuesday April 10th. Space is...

For young women in early South Asia, marriage was a crucial event that largely determined their socioeconomic and religious future. Yet while many of the rules and requirements for Hindu marriage around the beginning of the Common Era are well documented, there has been little in the way of systematic examinations of the evidence for...