Semester in Review: Spring 2025 at JHU
Introduction
For the past two years, I’ve written “Semester in Review” posts about my coursework at Johns Hopkins (Fall 2023 here; Spring and Summer 2024 here; and Fall 2024 here). This post is a bit more special as it marks the completion of the last semester in three years of coursework. Herein I review my Spring 2025 semester. Afterward, I reflect on my past three years of coursework as well as on next steps in JHU’s PhD program in Near Eastern Studies.
Spring 2025 Class Schedule
Generally, five courses is considered the advisable maximum for PhD students in our department, given the demands of each class. In previous semesters, I’ve typically exceeded this with seven or eight courses (usually auditing anything beyond the sixth). This semester, I set a personal record with ten courses—six at JHU and four additional audits in the Department of Semitics at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. At Johns Hopkins (professors in parentheses), my classes included The Book of Job (Theodore Lewis); History of Ancient Syria-Palestine II (Theodore Lewis); “Readings and Research,” an independent study for writing my dissertation prospectus (Theodore Lewis); Advanced Akkadian (Jacob Lauinger); Modern Hebrew (Cameron Scott); and The Talmud as Read in the Middle Ages: The Sugya of Kavod HaBriot (David Katz; audit). At CUA (again, professors in parentheses), I audited Arabic (Shawqi Talia), Biblical Hebrew Poetry (Edward Cook), Targumic Aramaic (Edward Cook), and a Syriac seminar on Ephrem the Syrian (Nathan Tilley). I was able to take this courseload because, conveniently, the CUA classes were stacked on Mondays and Wednesdays, while the JHU classes were scheduled on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. More importantly, all my professors graciously accommodated occasional scheduling conflicts.
Favorite Class
As always, I found all my classes valuable and learned a great deal. That said, this semester’s top honors go to Dr. Lewis’s seminar on the Book of Job. He teaches this class, partially, to honor the legacy of his professor, Michael V. Fox, with whom Lewis took a year-long seminar on Job during his undergraduate studies (!). The official course description does not do it justice: “Reading portions of the Book of Job in Hebrew. In addition to increasing proficiency in biblical Hebrew, the course also involves critical exegesis including grammatical analysis and textual criticism. Students will interact with various aspects of interpretation for the Book of Job (e.g., philology, text history, structure, literary history, message, poetics, rhetoric, philosophy, theology and reception history).” Our main textbooks were Édouard Dhorme (1921), Choon Leong Seow (2013), and David J. A. Clines (2006; 2012), along with a number of articles (e.g. Fox 1981; 2005; 2018; Lewis 2012; 2015). We read the Book of Job largely with the questions of meaning, genre, rhetoric, and legal metaphor in mind. I also developed a paper idea which has been accepted to be presented at a conference in Boston this fall (more to come then).
Extracurricular Activities
The list of extracurricular activities is, naturally, quite long. Here’s a brief summary: In February, I presented at the inaugural Johns Hopkins-Princeton Theological Seminary doctoral colloquium for graduate students in New Jersey. In April, I attended and presented at the 235th Annual Meeting of the American Oriental Society in Boston (now called the American Society for Premodern Asia). In March, I took a cruise to the Caribbean which included stops in Jamaica, Cayman Islands, and Tulum (Mexico). In between, I also traveled to New Orleans (Louisiana), Nashville (Tennessee), and Williamsburg/Jamestown/Yorktown (Virginia). In May, I spent three weeks in Stuttgart, Germany, while finishing up my seminar papers which were due at the end of the month. I also attended countless department lectures and events, including the Achinstein lecture by Ted Hiebert, a department lecture by Andrew Gross, the ANŠE lecture by Céline Debourse, and the Albright lecture by Susanne Paulus. Nevertheless, the absolute highlight of extracurricular activities this semester was Dr. Shawqi Talia’s retirement party at The Catholic University of America on April 28, 2025. During the event, Dr. Talia recited a poem he had composed in his own Neo-Aramaic dialect, while Dr. Cook presented a poem in honor of Dr. Talia, composed in ancient Aramaic (I’m not entirely certain which dialect, but likely either that of Onqelos or a Galilean form of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic).
Drs. Shawqi Talia (left) and Edward Cook (right) at Dr. Talia’s retirement party on April 28, 2025.
Academic Year in Review: AY 2024-2025
To summarize my academic year (2024-2025) in review, I took nine classes in the fall (The Evolution of Hebrew Linguistic Thought; Kings, Prophets, and Scribes: The Creation of “Israel” in the Deuteronomistic History; History of Ancient Syria/Palestine; Readings & Research; Middle Egyptian; Introduction to Arabic; Biblical Hebrew Prose I; Akkadian; Introduction to Targumic Aramaic) and ten more in the spring (see above). My favorite class last semester was Dr. Elnatan Chen’s seminar on the history of Hebrew linguistics, wherein I wrote my 25-page seminar paper on the history of Aramaic research from Late Antiquity to the present day with a dedicated section on Aramaic research in the Johns Hopkins tradition of Semitics (reviewing faculty publications and alumni dissertations on Aramaic from the founding of our department through today). I presented at SBL in the fall as well as the JHU-PTS colloquium and AOS in the spring. I traveled extensively both within and outside of the United States. And to top it all off, I wrote 15 blog posts on the Digital Semitics Online Library (DSOL):
- Sep. 1, 2024: Spring and Summer 2024 Semesters in Review at JHU
- Sep. 4, 2024: The Deuteronomistic History: Two Milestones in the History of Scholarship
- Sep. 15, 2024: My First Half Marathon
- Oct. 10, 2024: DtrH: The Göttingen School and Neo-Nothians
- Oct. 26, 2024: Sara Milstein: A (Brief) Literature Review
- Nov. 03, 2024: Thomas Jefferson: Monticello, UVA, and Hebrew/ANE Studies
- Nov. 16, 2024: DSOL’s One Year Anniversary
- Nov. 27, 2024: ASOR and SBL 2024
- Nov. 29, 2024: DtrH: Five Further Developments
- Dec. 18, 2024: The Doyen of DtrH: Thomas Römer
- Dec. 18, 2024: Does DtrH even exist?
- Dec. 19, 2024: DtrH: Books and Key Texts
- Jan. 6, 2025: Fall 2024 Semester in Review
- Feb. 23, 2025: JHU-PTS Doctoral Symposium
- Apr. 14, 2025: 235th Annual Meeting of the AOS (2025)
Conclusion: A Look Ahead at Summer 2025 and Beyond
My next immediate task is preparation for an international conference at the University of Strasbourg on June 16-17 where I’m scheduled to present a talk titled “Studying Aramaic in Sixteenth-Century Strasbourg: Fagius, Tremellius, and the Birth of Aramaic Studies.” (By the way, I thank Annie-Noblesse Rocher and Eran Shuali for accepting my paper for inclusion.) I’m especially excited for the keynote lecture by Stephen G. Burnett, whose work I’ve been reading for some time. While in Europe, I’ll be traveling to Berlin, Hamburg, Uppsala (ISBL), Oxford (Aram), Leiden (Summer School in Languages and Linguistics), and either Prague (RAI) or central Italy (personal travel). During these travels, I’m preparing for my comprehensive exams which I’ll take in late August or early September. (Note: my goal is 500 study hours by August 21. I’ve currently completed 93.7 hours of study, or 18.7%, and require approximately 5 hours per day for the next 80 days.) How am I studying? Among other tasks, I’m preparing a reading list of approximately 50 Akkadian tablets (here); translating all relevant Northwest Semitic texts (here); reviewing every assigned reading for the past three years of coursework (here); creating an mini-encyclopedia of topics in Hebrew Bible and ancient Near Eastern studies relevant for potential essay questions (here); and reading through the entire Hebrew Bible (yes, in Hebrew). I’ve also begun a long-term project to read all—nearly 1,100 (!)—published works by William Foxwell Albright (comprehensive bibliography here. I would be genuinely surprised if anyone alive today has read everything that Albright wrote. In fact, I find it hard to believe that even Albright himself has read everything that Albright wrote!)
Assuming I pass comps (which is not at all guaranteed!), I will be teaching both first- and second-year Biblical Hebrew at JHU in the Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 semesters. I’ll also audit a few classes (e.g. Archaic Aramaic; Archaic Hebrew Poetry; Advanced Akkadian; and First Year Amazigh). Most importantly, though, I’ll submit my dissertation prospectus in the fall as well as write my dissertation over the next two or three years. My current dissertation topic deals with case studies in Aramaic sociolinguistics.
Postscript
As customary for me to acknowledge, I couldn’t have achieved all of this without the support of many people in my life. While I’m beyond grateful to my family, friends, and JHU professors, I especially want to thank the three professors who allowed me to audit their classes at CUA: Edward Cook, Shawqi Talia, and Nathan Tilley. And I heartily congratulate Dr. Talia on his retirement!
About The Author
235th Annual Meeting of the AOS (2025) 
JHU-PTS Doctoral Symposium 
Fall 2024 Semester in Review 
ASOR and SBL 2024 
DSOL’s One Year Anniversary! 
Thomas Jefferson: Monticello, UVA, and Hebrew/ANE Studies