Throughout Islamic history, Islamic schools of law (madhāhib) enjoyed tremendous authority. In addition, traditional religious institutions that have taught the doctrines of the various Islamic schools of law have also wielded similar authority within the Arab-Muslim states. However, Arab-Muslim intellectuals challenged the authority of these madhāhib both from within the madhāhib and from outside of them. As a result, consensus (ijmā`) reached by past jurists of the madhāhib, has also been challenged in favor of a new type of ijtihād known as collective ijtihād. This new method of ijtihād allows professional women to participate in the process of lawmaking alongside men as reforms are made to Islamic family law. As a consequence of this legal process, the authoritarian method of traditional consensus (ijmā`) has been weakened in favor of more inclusive methods which allow for the creation of laws that are more favorable to women. Over the course of the twentieth century there has been a dynamic and ongoing debate within both traditionalist and reformist circles of Arab-Muslim society regarding the topic of marriage. Muslim conversations regarding the marriage contract demonstrate that the debates over family law in general, and the marriage contract in particular, are complex and challenging. The fact that not all Arab-Muslim intellectuals and muftīs share the same opinion regarding the legal age of marriage for women, the role of the marriage guardian (walī) in marriage, or the right of women to conduct their own marriages, for example, illustrates this point. Even individuals from within the same Islamist party have vastly differing opinions. While some argue for the preservation of the Islamic tradition by the continued restriction of a wife's role in her marriage, others want to grant women broader agency in some aspects of the marriage contract. All intellectuals, traditionalists, Salafis, and reformists, however, draw on past Islamic authority--the Qur'anic text, the Sunna of the Prophet, and past jurists' opinions--in order to legitimize their argument in an effort to preserve the identity of Muslim society and its core foundation, the Muslim family. Chapter one of this dissertation introduces the origins of Muslim jurists' opinions and rulings in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh). While the chapter outlines the opinions of the majority of jurists regarding the age of puberty (bulūgh) for men and women, the age of financial competency (rushd), and the legal age of marriage, it also illustrates the opinions of minority jurists who reject the marriage of minors outright. Chapter two demonstrates the opinions of numerous Arab-Muslim intellectuals, as well as the codification of some of the Arab-Muslim states' Personal Status Laws (PSLs), and the debates among intellectuals along with the evidence they cite to justify their opinions. Chapters three and four are concerned specifically with debates among Moroccan intellectuals. They also include a discussion of the history of debate over the Moroccan Mudawwana from its initial publication in 1957 through the present day. The chapters discuss the opinions of Moroccan intellectuals regarding some of the Articles of the Mudawwana and show the evidence presented by each side both for and against reforming the Mudawwana. Chapters three and four also present the opinions of intellectuals voiced during personal interviews I conducted in 2013. These interviews show how complex the task of compartmentalizing the various Arab-Muslim intellectuals' opinions may be when seeking to label them either traditionalist or reformist with respect to their views on the rights of women in marriage.

This dissertation explores the changing role of material culture in the expression of identity, using the Philistine settlement at Tel Miqne-Ekron in the Iron I (12th-10th centuries BCE) as a test case. A diachronic analysis documenting strategies of maintenance and adaptation points to the transformation of materials from domestic tools to symbols of social status, which were used to define social boundaries and promote a distinct identity. This occurred in conjunction with the increasing strength of the Philistine presence in the southern Levant.My dissertation focuses on one excavation area, described as the 'elite' zone. I outlined two areas of investigation: the organization of space, and a spatial distribution of the artifact assemblage. Through this analysis, I reconstruct Buildings 351 and 350 as elite residences, and Buildings 353 and 354 as the loci of crafts activities. Furthermore, I suggest that activities associated with Buildings 351 and 350 included elite sponsored feasting, and argue that the interconnected construction of these buildings with Buildings 353 and 354 implies an integrated function.In the final part of my analysis, I interpret change over time by contextualizing the foreign, i.e. Philistine and local, i.e. Canaanite material culture assemblages as a means to investigate diachronic variation. My research demonstrates that the traditional focus on foreign origins has obscured our understanding of these objects by removing them from their local contexts. Developments included a shift in the role played by the Philistine pottery, from a domestic assemblage associated with an immigrant populations' adjustment of traditional methods of daily practices, to a fine-ware assemblage, where it was used to express a concept of elite identity. The model I propose views change as a reflexive process involving both group and individual interactions.

This thesis investigates the failed state label on Lebanon. The thesis explores how Lebanon falls under the paradigm and how Lebanon contradicts, at times, the failed state model with the inclusion of Hizbullah.

Doctor of Philosophy / Umman-manda (literally “Troops of Manda”) is an Akkadian compound expression used to denote military entities and/or foreign peoples in a diverse number of texts pertaining to separate periods of ancient Near Eastern history. The dissertation initially discusses the various difficulties in ascertaining the etymology of the second component of the term Umman-manda. A very plausible etymology is proposed based on new research on the semantic range of the Sumerian word mandum. The thesis then focuses mainly on the references made to the Umman-manda in the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian sources, where it is used to denote the Cimmerians and Medes respectively. The starting point is that these references are making literary allusions to the Standard Babylonian version of the Cuthaean Legend. New information gained from these literary allusions provides insight into the significance of the term Umman-manda in the first millennium B.C.: it recalls the various attributes of the Umman-manda depicted in the Cuthaean Legend and applies these attributes to contemporary political events. The Cuthaean Legend envisions a powerful enemy that emerges unexpectedly from the distant mountains and establishes hegemony after a sudden burst of military power. This enemy will eventually be destroyed without the intervention of the Mesopotamian king. The thesis studies how the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian sources allude to the Cuthaean Legend and in this way they identify the Cimmerians and the Medes as the Umman-manda.

<p> In an effort to help alleviate low achievement and motivation in Turkish university preparatory English programs (Education First, 2015), an English teacher at Mihrimah Sultan University (pseudonym) in Istanbul, Turkey, conducted a study in which ten university English preparatory program students used a mobile language learning application, English Quickly (EQ pseudonym). The aim of the study was to ascertain whether or not the eight-week application usage period would help students to improve their English language skills as well as their motivation to practice English. The mobile application EQ was downloaded by the students in February 2017, and was used for eight weeks, terminating in April 2017. Students used the different functions of the application including watching videos, speaking, and learning new vocabulary. The conceptual framework used for the study consisted of an analysis of knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences based on the work by Clark and Estes (2008). Recommendations were generated and an evaluation plan was designed using the New World Kirkpatrick's Four Level Model (Kirkpatrick &amp; Kirkpatrick, 2016).</p><p>

<p> This quasi-phenomenological study identified the common lived classroom experiences of high school (grades 9-12) teachers who used the Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) method of world language instruction. The study also explained why some teachers who were trained in and had some experience using TPRS abandoned the method, and what they perceived as obstacles to its use. Additionally, the study identified the techniques perceived as effective by traditional teachers for promoting student success in producing and comprehending the target language with the goal of bridging the gap between TPRS and non-TPRS teachers.</p><p> The central phenomenon studied was teachers&rsquo; lived experiences using TPRS, a method of world language teaching for providing a near-immersion classroom learning experience. The TPRS method required no textbook or grammar syllabus and focused on providing students with interesting, repetitive, and comprehensible input of commonly used verb structures and high-frequency vocabulary within the context of a story. For this study, a non-TPRS traditional approach included using a textbook, a grammatical syllabus, and production-based communicative classroom learning activities.</p><p> A purposeful sample of study participants included three groups of ten teachers each. The first two groups constituted the phenomenological part of the study because they had training and experience with TPRS. In the first group, ten participants used TPRS and considered themselves primarily as TPRS teachers. In a second group, ten teachers were selected because they were trained in TPRS and had some experience using the method but discontinued or limited its use when they encountered obstacles and resistance. A third group, not part of the phenomenological portion of the study, consisted of ten teachers who were not trained in TPRS, used a traditional approach, and had no experience using the method. That group provided a perspective outside of TPRS training and experience to discover which teaching techniques they perceived as effective. That input was included in the study to inform the researcher of potential improvements to recommend for the continuously developing TPRS method.</p><p> Data were collected through in depth, face-to-face, in-person, open-ended, semi-structured interviews. The results of the data analysis identified sixteen common lived experiences of TPRS teachers, twelve obstacles encountered by teachers when using or trying out TPRS, and four recommendations to consider incorporating into this changing and evolving method of world language instruction. </p><p>

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Through research grounded in participant observation among online journalists in Jordan, this project contributes to the investigation of longstanding problems in social theory by asking how the relationship between mass communication and politics is changing in the post-internet age. Or perhaps more skeptically, it asks: Is this relationship changing, or do we merely assume that it must be? Focusing on the concept of censorship, where media and politics meet most forcefully, I investigate the intersections of new technologies, journalistic practices, and state control. My dissertation examines how journalists in Jordan negotiate state censorship and understand their own processes of self-censorship as they mediate modernity and political change in a country where political truths are to a great degree contrived and manipulated. My research explores the effects of censorship on digital news transmission – and the effects of digital transmission on censorship – as journalists create knowledge in an evolving media environment. Particularly in the wake of the so-called Arab Spring, new technologies have enabled a cadre of Jordanian journalists and media activists willing to test boundaries, and permitted an explosive media pluralism in the kingdom. In response to this more distributed, smaller-scale media production, the Jordanian state seems to be changing its tactics. Where it earlier relied on newspaper editors to act as gatekeepers, it now relies on cultivating self-censorship in the individual. My research shows that as media production and consumption become more distributed, so must state censorship. No longer centrally negotiated between government and media institutions, it is communicated to journalists through diffuse control, prosecutions of their peers, changing regulatory schema, and professional codes that promote "responsibility" and "balance" on the part of the individual. Nevertheless, there are still avenues of resistance available to journalists at both independent online news outlets and larger state-aligned outlets. I argue that the Jordanian regime disciplines its media to act as a form of window-dressing, in which it performs certain democratic ideals while ceding no power to its citizens and institutions of civil society. Through this strategy, aimed in part toward its own people but primarily at its all-important foreign investors and donors, the state adds a veneer of freedom to its autocratic foundation. / Anthropology