Gateway courses will give you foundational training and exposure to the field in preparation for the more specialized advanced work that you will do in your chosen concentration pathway or secondary field.
The department offers four secondary field pathways, with specific gateway courses, for undergraduate concentrators and for secondary field candidates from departments other than NELC. See the my.Harvard course search for complete descriptions of all NELC courses.
I. Middle East in Antiquity
SortOffered Fall 2025 | - Ancient Near East 115 (ANE 115): Archaeology of the Levant
- First Year Seminar 30G (FYSEMR 30G): Digging Egypt’s Past: Harvard and Egyptian Archaeology
- General Education 1185 (GENED 1185): The Power and Beauty of Being In Between: The Story of Armenia
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Offered Fall 2024 | - Ancient Near East 109 (ANE 109): First Civilizations: History and Archaeology of the Ancient Near East
- Ancient Near East 115 (ANE 115): Archaeology of the Levant
- Ancient Near East 134 (ANE 134): How do rituals work? Ancient Ritual and Modern Theory
- Ancient Near East 170 (ANE 170): Food, Identity, and the Biblical World
- Sumerian 141 (SUMERIAN 141): Introduction to Sumerian Mythology
- First Year Seminar (FYSEMR 65Q): The World's Oldest Literature, Then and Now
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Offered Spring 2024 | - Ancient Near East 151 (ANE 151): Women in the Ancient Near East
- Near Eastern Civilizations 101 (NEC 101): Historical Background to the Contemporary Middle East: Religion, Literature, and Politics
- First Year Seminar 60R (FYSEMR 60R): The Beginnings of Business
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Offered Fall 2023 | - Ancient Near East (ANE 108): Effects of Empire: Being Colonized in the Ancient World
- Ancient Near East 134 (ANE 134): How do rituals work? Ancient Ritual and Modern Theory
- Near Eastern Civilizations 107 (NEC 107): The History of the Book: Using Harvard's Greatest Treasures to Study the Material Text
- First Year Seminar 30G (FYSEMR 30G): Digging Egypt's Past: Harvard and Egyptian Archaeology
- First Year Seminar 62U (FYSEMR 62U): Zombies and Spirits, Ghosts and Ghouls: Interactions between the Living and the Dead
- First Year Seminar 65J (FYSEMR 65J): Who Do You Think You Are?: The Ethics of Identity
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Offered Spring 2023 (subject to change) | - Ancient Near East 140 (ANE 140): Sex, Death, and the Bible
- General Education 1090 (GENED 1090): What is a Book? From the Clay Tablet to the Kindle
- General Education 1099 (GENED 1099): Pyramid Schemes: What Can Ancient Egyptian Civilization Teach Us?
- Near Eastern Civilizations 101 (NEC 101): Historical Background to the Contemporary Middle East: Religion, Literature, and Politics
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Offered Fall 2022 | - Ancient Near East 197 (ANE 197): Bible and Empire
- Egyptian 150 (EGYPTIAN 150): Voices from the Nile: Ancient Egyptian Literature in Translation
- Armenian Studies 111 (ARMENST 111): Art and Culture of Armenia
- Near Eastern Civilizations 107 (NEC 107): History of the Book
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II. Jewish Studies
SortOffered Fall 2025 | - Jewish Studies 131 (JEWISHST 131): The Jewish Library
- Jewish Studies 163 (JEWISHST 163): Theories of Antisemitism
- Jewish Studies 164 (JEWISHST 164): Jews in the Americas
- Yiddish 112 (YIDDISH 112): Yiddish Literature and Culture in America
- First Year Seminar 65J (FYSEMR 65J): Who Do You Think You Are?
- First Year Seminar 66P (FYSEMR 66P): Jews in the Modern Middle East and North Africa, 1800-Present
- First Year Seminar 62J (FYSEMR 62J): Harvard’s Greatest Hits: The Most Important, Rarest, and Most Valuable Books in Houghton Library
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Offered Fall 2024 | - Jewish Studies 102 (JEWISHST 102): Jews, Judaism, Jewishness
- Jewish Studies 106 (JEWISHST 106): Mainstream Jews
- Jewish Studies 111 (JEWISHST 111): Modern Jewish Thought Seminar
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Offered Spring 2024 | - Jewish Studies 159 (JEWISHST 159): Cultures of Praise in Medieval Jewish, Islamic, and Christian Contexts
- Yiddish 115 (YIDDISH 115): The Yiddish Short Story: Folk Tales, Monologues, and Post-Apocalyptic Parables
- Yiddish 166 (YIDDISH 166): Jews, Humor, and the Politics of Laughter
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Offered Spring 2023 (subject to change) | - Jewish Studies 158 (JEWISHST) 158: 21st-Century U.S. Jewish Culture
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Offered Fall 2022 | - Hebrew 165 (HEBREW 165): Philosophy and Law: Readings in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah
- Jewish Studies 129 (JEWISHST 129): Josephus
- Yiddish 107 (YIDDISH 107): The Politics of Yiddish
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III. Histories and Cultures of Muslim Societies (Islamic Studies)
SortOffered Fall 2025 | - Islamic Civilizations 113 (ISLAMCIV 113): The History of the Moriscos: from the Iberian Peninsula to the Diaspora (16th-18th c.)
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Offered Fall 2024 | - Islamic Civilizations 112 (ISLAMCIV 112): Philosophy in Muslim Contexts
- Islamic Civilizations 178 (ISLAMCIV 178): Being Muslim in South Asia: Religion, Culture and Identity
- Persian 108 (PERSIAN 108): Persian Sufi Literature
- First Year Seminar 37Y (FYSEMR 37Y): Muslim Voices in Contemporary World Literatures
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Offered Spring 2024 | - Islamic Civilizations 134 (ISLAMCIV 134): Medieval Islam: An Age of Revolutions
- Islamic Civilizations 136 (ISLAMCIV 136): Indian Ocean Islam
- Islamic Civilizations 162 (ISLAMCIV 162): Shi’i Islam in Safavid Iran: Religion, Culture, and Change
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Offered Fall 2023 | - Islamic Civilizations 145 (ISLAMCIV 145): Introduction to Islamic Philosophy and Theology: The Classical and Medieval period
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Offered Spring 2023 (subject to change) | - General Education 1134 (GENED 1134): Understanding Islam and Contemporary Muslim Societies
- Islamic Civilizations 111 (ISLAMCIV 111): Transforming Tradition: Islamic Education in the Modern Muslim World
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Offered Fall 2022 | - Arabic 152 (ARABIC 152): Introduction to Qur’an and Hadith
- Islamic Civilizations 128 (ISLAMCIV 128): Religion and Society in Islamicate History (900 – 1300 CE) from Shi’i Centuries to Mongol Invasions
- Islamic Civilizations 145B (ISLAMCIV 145B): Introduction to Islamic Philosophy and Theology: The Modern Period
- Islamic Civilizations 163 (ISLAMCIV 163): Introduction to Islamic Mystical Traditions
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IV. Modern Middle Eastern Studies
SortOffered Fall 2025 | - Arabic 150R (ARABIC 150R): Arabic Literature
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Offered Fall 2024 | - Modern Middle East 104 (MODMDEST 104): Sectarianism and Islamic Identities in the Middle East: Modern and Medieval
- Modern Middle East 108 (MODMDEST 108): History of Modern Iran and Turkey
- Modern Middle East 158 (MODMDEST 158A): Modern Arabic Literature Seminar: Displacements in Modern Arabic Literature: An Introduction
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Offered Spring 2024 | - Modern Middle East 104 (MODMDEST 104): Sectarian Islam and Islamic Identities
- Modern Middle East 107 (MODMDEST 107): Regional Order and U.S. Wars
- Modern Middle East 109 (MODMDEST 109): The Middle East and the Great Divergence: An Economic History
- Modern Middle East 110 (MODMDEST 110): Colonizations and Decolonization in the Maghrib (19th - 20th c.)
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Offered Fall 2023 | - Modern Middle East 100 (MODMDEST 100): The Modern Middle East, Real and Imagined: An Introduction
- Modern Middle East 102 (MODMDEST 102): Shi’a Islam and Politics in the Middle East
- Modern Middle East 108 (MODMDEST 108): History of Modern Iran and Turkey
- Modern Middle East 117 (MODMDEST 117): Zawiyas, Harems and Coffee Shops: Everyday Life in the Pre-Modern Middle East
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Offered Spring 2023 (subject to change) | - Modern Middle East 104 (MODMDEST 104): Sectarianism and Islamic Identities in the Middle East: Modern and Medieval
- Modern Middle East 106 (MODMDEST 106): Government and Politics of the Modern Middle East and North Africa
- General Education 1123 (GENED 1123): Islam and Politics in the Modern Middle East
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Offered Fall 2022 | - Modern Middle East 102 (MODMDEST 102): Shi’a Islam and Politics in the Middle East
- Modern Middle East 103 (MODMDEST 103): History of Modern Iran
- Modern Middle East 122 (MODMDEST 122): Dynamics of Transformation in the Modern Middle East
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