Benjamin R. Foster
 
Over the course of three centuries, Yale has been actively and seriously engaged in Near Eastern learning, in both senses of the term—training students in the knowledge and skills needed to understand the languages and civilizations of the region, and supporting generations of scholars renowned for their erudition and pathbreaking research. From New Haven to Nineveh and Beyond traces the history of these endeavors through extensive use of unpublished archival materials, including letters, diaries, and records of institutional decisions. Developments at Yale are set against the wider background of changing American attitudes towards the Near East, as well as evolving ideas about the role of the academy and its curriculum in educating undergraduate and graduate students. Numerous illustrations, many of them previously unpublished, round out this vivid portrait of three centuries of Near Eastern learning at Yale. 
 
Benjamin R. Foster received his BA degree from Princeton; the Higher Standard Interpreter’s Certificate from the Middle East Centre for Arab Studies, Shemlan, Lebanon; and his MA and PhD from Yale. Appointed to Yale’s Department of Near Eastern Languages in 1975, he is Laffan Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature and served as curator of the Yale Babylonian Collection. He is author and editor of fifteen books and over 250 articles and reviews in Assyriology and the history of Oriental studies.