Provides an interdisciplinary overview of the cultures of the Arabic-speaking peoples of Southwest Asia and North Africa from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the present. Readings include historical, religious, literary and cultural texts from both the medieval and modern eras. Taught in English. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: human diversity.
Examines Islamic, especially Arab, culture and history as it relates to the Iberian Peninsula from 92 Ah/711 Ce to the present. Taught in English. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: historical context.
Focusing on the origins and development of the novel genre in the Arabic tradition, this course examines both the aesthetic qualities of the genre as an artistic form and the ways that it has depicted and intervened in the modern social, political, and cultural upheavals that have shaped the Arab world in the 20th century. Authors include Najib Mahfuz, Abd al Rahman Munif, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Ghassan Kanafani. Taught in English.
Explores the cultural politics of representations of the Arab and Islamic worlds both with an emphasis on literary representations of the Islamic world in travel narratives and novels from both the West and the Arab world. Examines historical, anthropological, and visual texts to consider how Islam has been narrated in colonial European imaginings about the Islamic world as well as contemporary representations. Taught in English.
Examines literary narratives primarily from the Arabic tradition through focusing on the relationship of literature to the development and transformations of cities and urban spaces in the modern period. Begins with readings of 19th century European narratives that chronicle the changing space of the modern city followed by urban narratives from the Arabic literary tradition in order to comparatively examine how "universal" processes of modernization, development, and globalization in the modern world have been narrated. Writers include Mahfouz, Munif, al-Takarli, al-Aswani, Celik, Abu Lughod. Taught in English.
