History
The department, within the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, was established in 2008 on the basis of the Department of Oriental and Islamic Studies and several interdisciplinary Area Studies programs.
Contents
Goals
The Department aims to study Near and Middle Eastern, also South and East Asian nations from the perspective of language, religion, history, art, literature and other aspects of civilization. In the field of the languages, the Department includes non-European languages such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Hebrew (as Middle Eastern languages) and Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Korean and Urdu language (as South and East Asian languages). Some of these languages, like Arabic and Persian at the moment have the status of minors for students of Humanities and Social Sciences and some other languages are offered as electives. The Department also includes studying religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam (as Middle Eastern traditions) and Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Jainism, Shinto, Taoism (as South and East Asian traditions) which appeared in the motherland of these Middle Eastern and Far Eastern languages and turned to be an important part of the world’s civilization. In the field of religious studies, it is aimed to research historical periods of these religious traditions and to study new religious movements, inter-religious relations, religious pluralism, religious dialogue, relations between religion and modernity etc. Some of the elective courses offered by the Department are: History of Religions, Religion and Globalization, Inter-religious Relations, Philosophy of Religion, Scriptural Studies, Islamic History, Islamic Civilization, Islamic Philosophy, Islamic Law, Islamic Ethics, Sufism, etc. Currently, in partnership with other relevant departments, the Department offers specific graduate-level Area Studies program with concentration in Middle Eastern, South and East Asian Studies and organizes public lectures, seminars and workshops for students and scholars in the field on a regular basis. The Department has published various articles, monographs and edited volumes on various areas of Religious Studies and languages. The Department supports several interdisciplinary graduate programs leading to Master’s and Ph.D. degrees.
Activities
One of the major focuses of the Department in the area of languages lies in translating articles and books from Persian and Arabic into Azerbaijani and vice versa, in close cooperation with Translation Studies Center at the University. The Department is distinguished among other departments of the University with young and dynamic, domestic and foreign academic staff members with Ph.D. degree and scientific research experience obtained abroad (from Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Japan, United States and EU countries). The Department also takes important steps towards improving the educational and research quality through the student and faculty exchange programs with a large number of higher education institutions overseas.