Courses

The encounter between Arabs and Westerners has been marked by its fair share of sorrow and suspicion. In this seminar we will read literary works by Arab authors written over approximately 1000 years–from the Crusades, the height of European imperialism, and on into the age of Iraq, Obama and ISIS. Through our readings and discussions, we will ask along with Arab authors: Is conflict between Arabs and Westerners the inevitable and unbridgeable result of differing world-views, religions and cultures? Are differences just a result of poor communication? Or is this “cultural conflict” something that can be understood historically?

This is the first course in the Elementary Arabic sequence. This sequence introduces non-Arabic speakers to the sounds, script, and basic grammar of Arabic-the language of 200 million speakers in the Arab world and the liturgical language of over a billion Muslims. Students will develop basic listening, speaking, reading and writing skills in Modern Standard Arabic. Classes will incorporate readings and audio-visual material from contemporary Arabic media, as well as popular music.

Arabic literature is a vibrant and humane tradition. At the same time, several Arab societies have experienced periods of exceedingly violent conflict throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first centuries. In this course, we will investigate the ways these two currents—war and the literary—converge in several Arab societies. As members of societies at war, but also as literary artists, how do authors represent these conflicting narratives? What sorts of war stories do they tell, how do they tell them, and what sort of literary practice is produced? We will study the birth of the Lebanese Civil War novel as a bona fide genre in the 1970s and 80s, how literature informed anti-colonial struggles in Palestine and Algeria from the 1950s to the present, and read some works of genre-bending horror and science fiction that have appeared in the wake of Iraq’s recent destruction. Taught in English, no knowledge of Arabic is required.

In this course we will explore the emergence of Arabic literature in one of the most exciting and important periods in the history of Islam and the Arab world; a time in which pre-Islamic Arabian lore was combined with translated Persian wisdom literature and Greek scientific and philosophical writings to form the canon of learning of the new emerged Arab-Islamic empire. We will explore some of the different literary genres that emerged in the New Arab courts and urban centers: from wine and love poetry, historical and humorous anecdotes, to the Thousand and One Nights, and discuss the socio-historical forces and institutions that shaped them. All readings are in English. No Arabic knowledge required.

In this course we will focus on acquiring conversational and listening comprehension skills, and building vocabulary in the Levantine/Shami dialect of spoken Arabic, spoken throughout bilad al-Sham or “Greater Syria.” Building upon the foundation of Modern Standard Arabic, we will focus upon points of grammatical and semantic convergence and divergence, and work to develop strategies for fluidly navigating our way between and within these two linguistic registers. We will study the language systematically, but we will also incorporate a range of written and audiovisual materials–music, films, television and web series–as well as other popular culture from the region.

Judaism emphasizes transmitting memory from one generation to the next. How have pivotal events and experiences in Jewish history lived on in Jewish collective memory? How do they continue to speak through artistic/literary composition and museum/memorial design? How does Jewish collective memory compare with recorded Jewish history? We will study turning points in Jewish history including the Exodus from Egypt, Jewish expulsion from medieval Spain, the Holocaust, and Israeli independence, as Jews in different times and places have interpreted them with lasting influence. Research includes work with print, film, and other visual/ performative media.

In this course we will study representations of the environment in modern Arab culture, across the media of film and literature. In our approach to Egyptian culture we will study depictions of the exemplary space of the cityscape and the village, and their entanglement with myths of nation. In the film and fiction of North Africa and the Persian Gulf we will explore representations of the desert, and a literary and visual approach that defies the typical casting of arid spaces as barren. We will explore how works from Palestine, Iraq, and Lebanon envision the relationship of their societies to the mountain and sea. Through our close study of Arab fictions we will think about how environments have shaped those societies, and how members of those societies have made claims of their own about and upon their surroundings. In translation, no Arabic required. All course readings will be in English.

The concept of adab as the liberal arts education of the premodern Arab world presents itself most vividly in the adab anthology. Authors writing in this genre collected and classified the knowledge of their time, drawing on material from a large variety of disciplines: literature (poetic, proverbial, historical-anecdotal), Religion (Quran, prophetic tradition, jurisprudence, theology), linguistics, as well as philosophy and the sciences. This encyclopedic genre represented the ideal of a broad-based erudition, and the perception that education should be entertaining as it is edifying. In this class we will read excerpts from the works of some of the major premodern anthology writers: Ibn Abd Rabbihi, Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani, al-Ibshihi and al-Nuwayri.

It is difficult to overstate Arab scientists’ contribution to science. A translation movement from Greek, Persian and Sanskrit into Arabic initiated in the eighth century, led to centuries of innovative scientific investigation, during which Arab scientists reshaped science in a variety of disciplines: from mathematics to astronomy, physics, optics and medicine. Many of their works entered Latin and the European curriculum during the Renaissance. In this reading course we will explore some of the achievements and thought processes in premodern Arabic scientific literature by reading selections from several seminal works. We will examine these in the cultural contexts in which they emerged and to which they contributed, and reflect on modern Western perceptions of this intellectual project. Readings and class discussions will be in both Arabic and English.

This course is an exploration of the world of the Thousand and One Nights, the most renowned Arabic literary work of all time. The marvelous tales spun by Shahrazad have captured and excited the imagination of readers and listeners–both Arab and non-Arab–for centuries. In class, we will read in Arabic, selections from the Nights, and engage some of the scholarly debates surrounding this timeless work. We will discuss the question of its origin in folklore and popular culture and the mystery of its “authorship,” as well as the winding tale of its reception, adaptation and translation. Readings and class discussions will be in both Arabic and English.

The Middle East Studies capstone will allow students to reflect upon their experiences with Middle East studies, including on-campus and off-campus classwork, internships, and cross-cultural experiences, and to synthesize their work in the minor. The course will involve selected readings from a number of disciplinary perspectives and it will culminate in a final oral presentation on a project that brings together each student’s work in Middle East Studies at Carleton.