Courses

A general survey and examination of the socio-cultural structure of the modern Arab world.  Taught in English. This course explores the intersecting political, artistic, and intellectual currents and practices that have shaped contemporary Arab cultures. It is organized as a survey of different cultural phenomena in Arab societies and diasporas including: the Arabic language and its varieties, music, poetry, law, television & cinema, and more. We will critically examine various meanings of the term “culture,” such as social norms, popular culture, and the arts, asking: what is “Arab culture” and how should we study it? In the class, we will engage in self-reflective practices where we examine our experiences and shifting understandings of culture and put these in dialogue with scholarly sources. We will read essays from The Cambridge Companion to Modern Arab Culture (Ed. Dwight F. Reynolds) and engage with literary narrative, poetry, film, music, theater, and architecture from Arab regions. This course takes an active learning approach; we will cultivate a learning community that supports the intellectual development of each member and the whole. Students will play an active role in curating course content. GE Foundation: Historical and Cultural Studies, GE Foundation: Race, Ethnicity, and Gender Diversity

Reading and analysis of major works of Arabic literature from the 6th to the 17th centuries including classical poetry, the Qur'an, and the Arabian Nights. This course introduces students, through a series of texts in English translation, to important works representative of pre-modern Arabic literature -- the longest continuous literary tradition in the Western world. These works (including pre- and early Islamic poetry, the Qur'an, Abbasid court and urban literature, Hispano-Arabic poetry and the Arabian Nights) are set in their cultural and historical context through reading assignments and classroom lectures, and they are discussed in some depth with full student participation. Students not only become acquainted with a number of masterpieces of a major and highly influential world literature, while considerably expanding their cultural horizons, but also encounter basic approaches of dealing with translations of those texts. Serious attention will be devoted to the nature of literary evidence and its utilization in support of aesthetic and critical judgments. Prereq: English 1110 (110). Not open to students with credit for 371. GE Foundation: Literary, Visual, and Performing Arts

Reading and analysis of representative works of the 19th and 20th centuries by contemporary Arab women authors. This course explores modern Arabic literature from the 1960s to the present as a space where different understandings of gender and citizenship are analyzed and imagined. Starting with debates about gender and citizenship in the early postcolonial period, we will discuss novels, short stories, and poetry by women writers that speak to different historical and national contexts, such as liberation from colonial powers, the Lebanese Civil War, Palestinian historical memory, and legacies of slavery in the Gulf. We will complement these literary texts with both documentary and narrative film. In each section of the class, we will consider how literary texts intervene in different conceptions of citizenship and social justice. By participating in ongoing scholarly conversations on modern Arabic literature and gender we will also reflect on how our own learning community is generating questions and knowledge. Prereq: Completion of GE Foundation Writing and Information Literacy course. Not open to students with credit for 2702 (372), 2702H (372H), 372, or WGSSt 2702H (372H). Cross-listed in WGSSt. GE Theme: Citizenship for a Diverse and Just World.

This course on modern Arabic literature and culture in translation focuses on questions of belonging, relationship to space, and migration. It examines how Arabic literary narratives, films, documentaries, and other arts have imagined modes of belonging to spaces such as cities and nations, the natural world (and even the universe!) from the early postcolonial period to the present. Prereq: English 1110. GE Theme: Lived Environments