Teaching Assistant Professor of Arabic Bud Kauffman is teaching a new Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC) course entitled “The Language of Refugeeism”. Throughout the semester, students have studied and discussed various aspects of the refugee experience through the lens of … Read more

Jan Bardsley gave invited lectures this fall in New York at Siena College and the Wang Center, SUNY Stony Brook: “Millennial Maiko: The Geisha Apprentice in Japanese Popular Culture.” Last spring she spoke at University of Oregon, SUNY Fashion Institute for … Read more

Associate Professor Pamela Lothspeich has been awarded a Senior Research Fellowship from the American Institute of Indian Studies, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This fellowship will allow her to spend the fall semester in India to … Read more

Students in Assistant Professor Claudia Yaghoobi’s first-year seminar, “Wars and Veterans: Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan,” were asked to create a virtual exhibition on war and veterans with the help of staff from the Ackland Art Museum.  Their work, which was … Read more

Assistant Professor Claudia Yaghoobi new book, Aṭṭār, Persian Sufism, and European Mysticism has been published by Purdue University Press. Traversing linguistic, national, and disciplinary boundaries, her book calls into question the presumed differences between medieval Islam and the West and makes possible a … Read more

On April 27, seven students in Assistant Professor Claudia Yaghoobi’s “Middle Eastern Women Writers” presented their research at the eighteenth annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research in the category, Diversity and Equity Track.  Leah Balkoski, Neusha Zadeh, and Tahjamare Warren won … Read more

Congratulations to Diego Morro Paredes who participated in the seventh annual Chinese Bridge Speech Contest for University Students in New England (East USA division), on April 22.  Diego won second place in the advanced level!  An exchange student from Spain, Diego … Read more

Given the overwhelming success of last year’s event “Chinese Hero—UNC Chinese Character Championship” (汉字英雄), faculty in the Chinese program, led by Lecturer Luoyi Cai, held their second such Championship on March 23.  About 140 students from the Chinese program, and some twenty … Read more

Two events organized by Doria El Kerdany, Lecturer in the Arabic program, brought local Syrian families into contact with Arabic language students this spring, allowing them to learn from each other.  First, on March 4, twenty Syrian families from Carrboro, Durham, … Read more

Associate Professor Robin Visser has been awarded a prestigious fellowship from the National Humanities Center in 2017-2018 for her research on Chinese-language environmental literature from border regions of China.  During the fellowship period, Dr. Visser will be in-residence at the Center … Read more