Graduate student Nathan Devir recently returned from his study abroad with much praise for the College's intensive Summer Arabic Program. Based at Al-Akhawayn University in Ifrane, Morocco, Devir went to his Arabic language classes five hours a day, five days a week, followed by a mandatory Arabic-speaking lunch and four or five hours of homework. With any leftover time, there were lectures (in Arabic) on topics pertaining to North Africa and Islam, and a choice of weekly clubs, which offered activities such as calligraphy, and Arab music.
Devir also took an excursion to the Sahara with a team of anthropologists from Al-Akhawayn, and visited a Zaoui community—a Moroccan branch of Islam that subscribes in part to the tenets of Sufi mysticism.
Growing up in Montana, Devir went to Israel for college, and stayed on to fulfill his military service. With a Bachelor of Arts in French and fluency in Hebrew, he hopes he has widened his job prospects with the summer program, on which, he says, he learned an extraordinary about of Arabic. Besides the languages, he also has expertise in the literature of the Near East, another area of expertise.
“The main reason I went on the summer program was to be able to read works of literature in their original language,” he explains. “First-hand reading in Arabic is far superior to a translation.”
Devir says he chose to attend Penn State because of the excellent reputation of the Comparative Literature program.
“I am so grateful to the College for their support of my study in Morocco,” he says. “It was such a beneficial experience.”