Research Update (2025-2026)

Princeton: From Jan. 12-16, I started off the spring semester strong with a one-week intensive course on Pre-Islamic Arabia and Arabic hosted at Princeton University, organized by Jack Tannous, and taught by Ahmad Al-Jallad. It was a pleasure to meet students from a variety of institutions, especially colleagues from Princeton and Yale.

Comprehensive Exams: I received notice on Jan. 28 that I had officially passed all my comprehensive exams, which was recorded with the Graduate Board, thereby advancing me to PhD candidacy (ABD, i.e. “All But Dissertation”).

Really Dead Languages: The following few days (Jan. 29-31), I celebrated my PhD Candidacy with the third annual workshop offered by the Department of Ancient and Medieval Languages and Cultures at The Catholic University of America, called “Really Dead Languages” (RDL). The workshop provides a series of one-hour crash course seminars in various rarer ancient languages, and this year’s sessions included Canaano-Akkadian (Andrew Gross), Old Turkic/Uyghur (Adam Bremer-McCollum), Qumran Aramaic (Andrew Litke), and Classical Armenian (Julia Hintlian), among others.

Coursework: With comps behind me, I needed a long break and did what every ABD student would do: I signed up to take nine classes. The coursework this semester was non-stop but exhilarating. At Hopkins, I audited (1) Ancient Israelite Religion, (2) Qohelet, (3) Advanced Akkadian, (4) Readings in the Talmud, (5) History of the Jews in Pre-Modern Times, (6) Semitic Sisters: The Intersection of Hebrew and Arabic Language Learning, and (7) Independent Study: Dissertation Research. At Catholic University, I took (8) Aramaic Dialects and (9) Syriac. Fortunately, the CUA classes were on Mondays and Wednesdays, while the JHU classes were on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and/or Fridays, allowing me to be in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. on alternating days.

Teaching: On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I also taught two classes at Hopkins (the continuation of the fall semester classes): “Elementary Biblical Hebrew II” (for second-semester students) and “Readings in Hebrew Prose and Poetry” (for intermediate students). In the elementary class, we completed Lambdin’s (1971) introductory grammar and read through the entirety of Ruth and Jonah. In the intermediate class, we read a selection of different texts in increasing difficulty: Gen 22; Jon 1-4; Ps 1, 2, 23, 29, 82, 121; Amos 1-2; Exod 15; and Job 1-3. The students were also introduced to various issues in reading Hebrew poetry as well as historical Hebrew grammar.

Conferences and Lectures: In addition to Princeton intensive course and RDL workshop, I also attended several other conferences and lectures during the semester. On Feb. 28, I drove up—again—to Princeton for our annual JHU-PTS graduate student colloquium in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. On Apr. 9, Derek Kennet (UChicago) gave the annual Albright lecture at JHU. On May 19-20, I attended the annual conference of the International Association for Comparative Semitics (IACS) at Penn State University in Pennsylvania (organized there by Profs. Gonzalo Rubio and Tawny Holm).

Göttingen (plus Hamburg and Marburg): The absolute highlight of the spring was my return trip to Germany from Feb. 3-14. The primary reason for my trip was an invitation by Prof. Dr. Reinhard Müller and his graduate student, Elisabeth Behr, to give a talk on my dissertation research at the Alttestamentliches Doktorandenkolloquium at the prestigious and historic Georg-August-Universität of Göttingen. (The reader will likely know that Göttingen was the home of many of the great and pioneering giants of the field, including Julius Wellhausen, Heinrich Ewald, Johann Gottfried Eichhorn, Hugo Gressmann, Paul Anton de Lagarde, and many others). My talk was titled “The Social History of Old Aramaic,” and in addition to the Göttingen faculty, I was honored to engage with Manfred Krebernik and Christian Stadel who were in attendance. The Old Testament department at the University of Göttingen even featured my visit as an “Academic Guest in Göttingen” through its departmental communications and social media (see image below). While in Germany, I should add, I also met up with colleagues in Hamburg as well as attended the Abschiedsvorlesung of Prof. Dr. Stefan Weninger in Marburg (farewell lecture on the occasion of his retirement).