User:Leo Caesius

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Charles G. Häberl

Born June 22, 1976
Neptune, NJ, USA
Occupation Academic

Leo Caesius is the screen name of Charles G. Häberl [ʧaɹḷz ʤoɹʤ he:bɚl], a member of the faculty at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES) at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The name Leo Caesius is derived from Catullus 45: solus in Libya Indiaque tosta / caesio ueniam obuius leoni.

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[edit] Background

Häberl was born and raised in the State of New Jersey, and has spent most of his life in Monmouth County. After leaving New Jersey at the age of 18, he has lived in Providence, Rhode Island, Bologna, Italy, Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City. He has also lived briefly in Beirut and worked several summers on the islands of Corfù and Cunda in the Mediterranean.

Häberl is the third Charles George in his family after his father and grandfather. Since 1870, the year in which Caspar Häberl immigrated to the United States, the family has ceased indicating the umlaut over the a. Häberl reintroduced it as a result of confusion about the pronunciation of his name among his European colleagues.

[edit] Education

Häberl attended Ocean Township High School in Oakhurst, New Jersey. He is a graduate of Brown University (AB, 1998) and Harvard University (AM, 2003 and PhD, 2006). He has also studied at the Università degli studi di Bologna and the American University of Beirut.

[edit] Professional Work

In addition to teaching Arabic language courses and courses on the modern Middle East, Häberl is also responsible for the Center's development and communication. In the past he has edited the official newsletters of the Semitic Museum at Harvard University and the Cyprus American Archaeological Research Institute. He is currently the English-language editor of the AIC Update, the official bi-weekly newsletter of the American Iranian Council, and a contributing editor for the Arab Washingtonian, a weekly bilingual (Arabic and English) based in Washington, D.C.

Häberl's primary focus is upon ethnic, linguistic, and religious minorities, including the Mandaeans, Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in the Middle East, as well as Muslims in America. With regard to the latter, he has criticized the media coverage of Arabs and Muslims in America and the West, and suggests that the media could potentially play a more positive role in bridging the divide between the West and the Arab world. He believes whenever Islam is involved, the media frequently eschews first-hand accounts from the principle actors in favor of hearsay (no matter how outlandish it may be), and sacrifices traditional standards of journalistic integrity in favor of sensationalism.

[edit] Academic Contributions

Häberl is an active and dedicated fieldworker. Since Rudolf Macuch's death in 1993, he has been the only linguist conducting fieldwork on the Mandaic dialect of Aramaic spoken in the Iranian province of Khuzestan and in a sizable diaspora. The Mandaic language is the liturgical language of the Mandaean religion, which (unlike most other languages of the ancient Middle East, save for Persian) has survived to the present day in a vernacular form. He has recently completed writing a descriptive grammar of the Neo-Mandaic dialect of Khorramshahr, which will be published by the German publishing house Harrassowitz.

[edit] Academic Societies

Häberl is a member of the American Oriental Society (AOS), the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR), the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL). He is is a frequent attendant and occasional speaker at their annual meetings, and was the official Convener for its 35th annual meeting in San Antonio. He is also responsible for maintaining NACAL's web presence.

[edit] Publication and articles

  • Häberl, C.G. 2004. "Mandaean Studies Since the Millennium" in Folia Orientalia 40 (Kraków).
  • Häberl, C.G. 2006. "Iranian Scripts for Aramaic Languages" in Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 341: 21-30 (Boston).
  • Häberl, C.G. 2007. "The Relative Pronoun d- and the Pronominal Suffixes in Mandaic" in Journal of Semitic Studies LVII/1 (Spring 2007): 71-77 (Manchester).
  • Häberl, C.G. (in press) "Introduction to the New Edition" in The Great Treasure of the Mandaeans: A Gnostic Scripture (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2007).
  • Häberl, C.G. (in press) Review of J.B. Segal and E.C.D. Hunter, Catalogue of the Aramaic and Mandaic Incantation Bowls in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 2000) in Orientalistische Literaturzeitung (Berlin).
  • Häberl, C.G. (in press) The Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr in the series Semitica Viva, ed. Otto Jastrow (Wiesbaden).

[edit] External links

  • [1] - The Lingua Franca and International Communication, NELC Department Newsletter, Spring 2003 (Cambridge, MA).
  • [2] - Review of Lynne Long (ed.), Translation and Religion (Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2005).
  • [3] - Official NACAL Website.
  • [4] - Information on the Neo-Mandaic Dialect of Khorramshahr.
  • [5] - The Arab Washingtonian