<p>Hazor’s role in an international Late Bronze Age context has long been indicated but never thoroughly investigated. This role, I believe, was more crucial than previously stressed. My assumption is based on the very large size of this flourishing city which, according to documents, possessed ancient traditions of diplomatic connections and trade with Mesopotamia in the Middle Bronze Age. Its strategic position along the most important N-S and E-W main trade routes, which connected Egypt with Syria-Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Sea with the city and beyond, promoted contacts. Hazor was a city-state in Canaan, a province under Egyptian domination and exploitation during this period, a position that also influenced the city’s international relations.</p><p>Methodologically the thesis examines areas of the earlier and the renewed excavations at Hazor, with the aim of discussing the city’s interregional relations and cultural belonging based on external influences in architectural structures (mainly temples), imported pottery and artistic expressions in small finds, supported by written evidence. Cultic influences are also considered.</p><p>Various origin and find contexts of the imported and culturally influenced material can be recognized, which imply three concepts in the field of interaction studies found within the framework of a modified World Systems Theory and also according to C. Renfrew’s Peer Polity Interaction model:</p><p>1) The northern influenced material at Hazor should be understood in the context of cultural identity. It continues from earlier periods and is maintained through external trade and the regional interaction between Canaanite city-states in the north, resulting in certain cultural homogeneity.</p><p>2) A core-periphery approach is used to explain the special unequal relation between Canaan and Egypt, in which Hazor might have possessed an integrating semi-peripheral role, a kind of diplomatic position between Egypt and its northern enemies. The city’s loyalty to Egypt is hinted at in documents and in the increasing evidences of emulation in elite contexts appearing on the site.</p><p>3) A model of ‘interregional interaction networks’ describes the organization of the trade which provided certain consumers at Hazor with the Aegean and Cypriote pottery and its desirable content. The cargo of the Ulu Burun and Cape Gelidonya ships and documents show that luxury items were transited from afar through Canaan. Such long-distance trade / exchange require professional traders that established networks along the main trade routes. The thesis suggests that Hazor possessed a node position in such a network.</p><p>Keywords: Hazor, Canaan, Eastern Mediterranean, Late Bronze Age, contacts, trade, temple architecture, Mycenaean pottery, Cypriote pottery, interregional interaction networks, emulation, peer polity interaction, centre-periphery approach.</p>

This thesis explores the themes, and trends within the novels of the acclaimed Syrian writer Hanna Mina. Three novels are discussed: Fragments of Memory (بقايا صور), The Swamp (المستنقع), and Sun on a Cloudy Day (الشمس في يوم غائم). The focus revolves around the relationship between rich and poor during a stage of transformation from imperial feudalism into urban modernity in Syria following the Second World War.

Hazor’s role in an international Late Bronze Age context has long been indicated but never thoroughly investigated. This role, I believe, was more crucial than previously stressed. My assumption is based on the very large size of this flourishing city which, according to documents, possessed ancient traditions of diplomatic connections and trade with Mesopotamia in the Middle Bronze Age. Its strategic position along the most important N-S and E-W main trade routes, which connected Egypt with Syria-Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean Sea with the city and beyond, promoted contacts. Hazor was a city-state in Canaan, a province under Egyptian domination and exploitation during this period, a position that also influenced the city’s international relations. Methodologically the thesis examines areas of the earlier and the renewed excavations at Hazor, with the aim of discussing the city’s interregional relations and cultural belonging based on external influences in architectural structures (mainly temples), imported pottery and artistic expressions in small finds, supported by written evidence. Cultic influences are also considered. Various origin and find contexts of the imported and culturally influenced material can be recognized, which imply three concepts in the field of interaction studies found within the framework of a modified World Systems Theory and also according to C. Renfrew’s Peer Polity Interaction model: 1) The northern influenced material at Hazor should be understood in the context of cultural identity. It continues from earlier periods and is maintained through external trade and the regional interaction between Canaanite city-states in the north, resulting in certain cultural homogeneity. 2) A core-periphery approach is used to explain the special unequal relation between Canaan and Egypt, in which Hazor might have possessed an integrating semi-peripheral role, a kind of diplomatic position between Egypt and its northern enemies. The city’s loyalty to Egypt is hinted at in documents and in the increasing evidences of emulation in elite contexts appearing on the site. 3) A model of ‘interregional interaction networks’ describes the organization of the trade which provided certain consumers at Hazor with the Aegean and Cypriote pottery and its desirable content. The cargo of the Ulu Burun and Cape Gelidonya ships and documents show that luxury items were transited from afar through Canaan. Such long-distance trade / exchange require professional traders that established networks along the main trade routes. The thesis suggests that Hazor possessed a node position in such a network. Keywords: Hazor, Canaan, Eastern Mediterranean, Late Bronze Age, contacts, trade, temple architecture, Mycenaean pottery, Cypriote pottery, interregional interaction networks, emulation, peer polity interaction, centre-periphery approach.

<p> This research is the first exploratory survey of rule of law officials in Iraq. Prior to this research, little has been done to examine whether U.S. rule of law efforts in Iraq were informed by a proper knowledge of the culture and criminal justice systems of Iraq and whether the U.S. learned lessons over time. </p><p> This research demonstrates that understanding of the indigenous legal and social culture is critical to the success of rule of law programs, that there are distinctive characteristics of the legal culture in Iraq, and that the rule of law programs of the U.S. in Iraq were not informed by an adequate understanding of the culture of Iraq. The author concludes that a new paradigm &ndash; Enablement Plus &ndash; is necessary if the U.S. is to improve the chances of success for rule of law programs during and immediately after conflict.</p>

My dissertation analyzes the architectural voice of the Islamic bourgeoisie by evaluating contemporary government-funded urban renewal projects in Turkey. This topic also discusses the counter voices' response to the urban renewal programs which sparked the Gezi Park protests of summer 2013. My dissertation explores how the AK Party is framing Ottoman history and remaking the Turkish urban landscape by urban development projects. I spell out specific ways in which Erdogan uses cultural capital of the Ottoman past to frame Erdoganian Neo-Ottomanism. My work investigates the AK Party's Islamic form of neoliberalism with Pierre Bourdieu's concept of cultural capital. Specifically I look at the application of Istanbul as the European Capital of Culture (ECoC), an urban renewal project by the AK Party in the Ankara neighborhood of Hamamonu, and the protests at Istanbul's Gezi Park and Ankara's Ulucanlar prison complex.

During the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988, the Iraqi Baʿth party engaged in the production of historical narrative, which defined the party's ideal of Iraqi nationality and statehood, while promoting the legitimacy of its military efforts. Public intellectuals played an important role in the manufacture of such historical narrative. This thesis examines two works produced in the service of this project, Al-Ṣirāʿal-ʿIrāqiyy Fārisiyy, or "The Iraqi-Persian Conflict," and Tārīkh al-Munāzaʿāt wa-l-Ḥurūb Bayn al-ʿIrāq waʾĪrān, or "The History of the Conflicts and Wars Between Iraq and Iran." It will be demonstrated that these works reflected, and rarified a wartime nationalist discourse permeating the public sphere, in which an ideal of Iraqi nationality and statehood was defined through the demonization of an essentialist Persian other. Pre-Islamic and medieval Islamic history was employed to emphasize episodes of violence and cultural conflict between Iraqis and Iranians, in doing so illustrating the characteristics of both peoples. Iraqi nationality was defined as embodying superlative qualities of governance, military prowess, cultural achievement, and religiosity. Iraqi nationhood was defined and elevated in contrast to an opposite, malicious Persian nationality, rooted in anti-Arab hostility and characterized by inferiority in piety, culture, leadership, and warfare. Direct parallels existed between this nationalist narrative, and public sphere expressions of Baʿthist nationalist discourse, such as government statements, school textbooks, and monument construction.

This study focuses on the musical activities and views of Iranian immigrant artists who perform, teach, and support traditional Iranian music in Los Angeles and Southern California. This geographic area and its interconnected social networks, which I refer to as Irangeles, is part of a diaspora culture industry where music is central to everyday life, but where modern Iranian pop music dominates. Given Iran's historical negative stigma attached to entertainment-oriented music making, and the popularity of entertainment and dance-driven Persian pop in contemporary Irangeles, practitioners of traditional Iranian music express frustration and face challenges in promoting their art, what they feel is an authentic form of Iranian culture. The music they make expresses both personal and cultural values: it is a form of creative expression that presents itself as interwoven with their Iranian identity, reflecting personal and cultural ideals of character in Iranian culture. My findings highlight how Iranian immigrant artists avail themselves of the socio-cultural infrastructure of Irangeles to network with like-minded artists and strategically use satellite TV, online technology and social media to find recognition for, teach, and promote diverse genres of traditional Iranian music in this particular diaspora setting.

The current Islamic Republic of Iran distinguishes between homosexuals and same-sex sexual activity: the former is not recognized as an identity, while state apparatuses openly condemn the latter. Beginning in Iran's medieval period, through its current Islamic regime, this dissertation argues that the allowances made for behaviors and attitudes for queer same-sex sexual intimacies in the historiography of Iranian sexuality are very distinct from the modern and Western notion of `gay'. Same-sex sexual relations in Iran threaten the conventional order that is built on an accepted series of gender differences reinforced by the Islamic regime. Marginalization of Iran's queer population permeates into local Iranian communities, creating ruptures with society and family. In the face of a generally repressive and heteronormative Iranian state, as well as the prospect of resettlement abroad, Iranian queers are fleeing to Turkey. This dissertation examines the processes by which queer Iranians face unprecedented forms of stigmatization and violence in Iran and later in Turkey. Going beyond a simple report of homophobic abuse in the Middle East, I engage ethnography as a vehicle by which to appreciate the effects of the constant silencing of queer voices and issues on social, familial, governmental and religious relations in Iran. During the summer of 2012, I conducted 24 qualitative interviews with queer Iranian asylum seekers and refugees in Turkey to assess the impact of societal and state consequences for queers in Iran, and later as refugees. Migration into Turkey reworks social relations based on race, sexual orientation and nationality; Iranians are both victims of and agents within the processes of asylum. An analysis of Iranians vis-à-vis one another, as well as their relations with local Turks, will explain the way race and sexual orientation impact migrant life. My research examines how the failure of figuring non-heteronormative sexuality into modern social, national, religious and academic discourses of Iranian culture is destructive on a human rights level, as it fails to generate new possibilities for developing truthful identities in Iranian and Turkish society and human rights law concerning queers.

Even though aid is a cornerstone of the Egyptian-American relationship, there is little research about economic aid's role in achieving US objectives, especially in producing policy alignment that would normalize Israel. Likewise, an under-studied derivative question is how the stipulation to maintain peace with Israel affected the (1) economic and structural processes of aligning Egypt with the American vision of `market-democracy' and (2) Egyptian critical assessments of the (non-military) effects associated with alignment into the American orbit? I argue that a reforming and democratizing narrative was used to transform Egypt into a stable "market-democracy" whose prosperity entailed pursuit of a "warm" peace. The transformation depended upon a dual strategy, combining the targeting of "natural allies" among a complicit elite as well as on privatization to align businesses, territories, civil organizations, and institutions or segments therein with American interests. The strategy's success in achieving alignment was also its weakness. Dependence on an autocratic elite for the implementation of reforms had the counter-effects of facilitating corruption and of reducing regime incentives to expand its constituencies of support beyond direct beneficiaries of the neoliberal privatizing changes. Instead of debate and engagement with opposing views to build new alliances, the strategy superseded and avoided sites of opposition. Therefore, contrary to the original aim of aid provision, the peace remained cold while its normalization dimensions became discursive triggers used as prisms with which to judge aid, the neoliberal reformist agenda, as well as normalization. The new partnerships provoked the production of competing conceptualizations of the proper relationship between the state and its citizens, conveyed in legal and constitutional re-definitions and re-distributions of rights and duties, as well as in divergent nationalist visions for Egypt's future. These competing ideas ranged between a nationalism that is globalizing, free-market, US- and regime-supported and another vision that is traditional, historically-informed, and socio-culturally-sensitive. Normalization's connection with aid had the counter-theoretical effect of reducing aid's ability to engender Gramscian hegemony. The US strategy of targeting allies and of privatization to effect normalization could not overcome extant socio-political forces whose discourses charged that aid produced anything but subordination (taba'iyya) - which differed significantly from promises of "peace, stability, and growth". Ultimately, even "reforming and democratizing" aid efforts could not disguise the subordinating effects of market and political alignment, and thus were not sufficient to elicit a new "common sense."

This dissertation provides an understanding of Sediqeh Dowlatabadi's notion of modernity and her contribution to the Iranian women's movement by an examination of her life and writings. In particular, the dissertation pays attention to her role as a newspaper publisher of Zaban-e Zanan (Women's Tongue) and director of the Kanun-e Banuvan (Women's Society.) Dowlatabadi's understanding of her social condition was based on the space she found herself within at different phases of her life; the concept of modernity she held in her youth, which was partially inhibited by societal expectations, was not the view of modernity she ascribed to in the later stages of her career and has become known for as a pioneer of Iranian women's rights.In Chapter Two, Dowlatabadi's formative environment and benefits from a politically and culturally fluid space because of her family's heterodox religious ties and participation in events leading up to and during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911 CE) are examined. In this environment Sediqeh received a strong education but continued to adhere to many common cultural practices. Thereafter, in Chapter Three, Dowlatabadi's actions and writings during the first run of her publication are examined. "A Pitiful Story," which is a piece of Dowlatabadi's fiction from the period, is analyzed utilizing neo-historicist criticism. During this time period the public space allowed her to imagine a somewhat more liberal notion of modernity than many of her contemporaries. In Chapter Four, Dowlatabadi's support to go abroad and reasons for moving to an international space are considered. Her interactions with the international women's movement and the new space she found herself in are analyzed in Chapter Five; regardless, she remained true to her own Iranian-ness above all else. Finally, in Chapter Six, Dowlatabadi's return to Iran is deconstructed as is her behavior of working within the Pahlavi system to oppose it.Dowlatabadi made many unique contributions to the Iranian women's movement and the international women's movement. Dowlatabadi, in her role as an advocate of Iranian modernity, created a façade for herself as an "every woman" which other Iranian women could identify with and aspire to be.