Courses

This interdisciplinary course examines Jewish-Muslim interaction in the spheres of written culture, kinship, shared culinary practices and living spaces, neighborhoods, musical customs, and overlapping religious practices. It considers these relations in Spain, Egypt, North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and modern France. Historic contexts include the amazing medieval world of the Cairo Geniza and Islamic Spain; colonialism and modernity in the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century Mediterranean; and the present-day aftermath of Jewish emigration from the region. This is a rich history with many paths, as viewed through the prism of culture.

The seminar explores the making of modern Syria from late 19th century through early 21st, and then turns to investigate the country's unraveling during the 2011 uprising and its aftermath. Topics include: the nature of Ottoman rule; the transition from imperial territory to Syrian nation-state; the French colonial Mandate; postcolonial state-building; minorities, ethnicity and the politics of sectarianism; ideologies of nationalism, Communism, Ba`thism and political Islam; literature and cultural politics; state secularism and authoritarian rule; the Syrian revolution of 2011, the subsequent civil war, and the ongoing struggle for democracy.

A broad-ranging introduction to pre-modern, modern, and contemporary Islam in light of how Muslims have approached their foundational religious text, the Qur'an. Topics include: Muhammad and the emergence of Islam; theology, law and ethics; war and peace; mysticism; women and gender; and modern debates on Islamic reform. We shall examine the varied contexts in which Muslims have interpreted their sacred text, their agreements and disagreements on what it means and, more broadly, their often competing understandings of Islam and of what it is to be a Muslim.

Introduces NES majors to the sources, tools, and methods used in Near Eastern Studies, and to central questions and debates that have informed the region's study in varying disciplines (history, comparative literature, religious studies, political science, and anthropology). Also covers the nuts and bolts of academic research and writing: how to design a research project, find and make sense of relevant primary and secondary sources, develop an argument, and write a compelling scholarly paper. Includes guest lectures and visits to Firestone Library.

A survey of the history of Islamic law and its developments, and the attempts of the Muslim jurists to come to term with the challenges of modern times. It will focus on issues in constitutional and personal laws that have the greatest relevance to the modern era.

This course explores how feminist thought & activism circulates globally by examining a variety of feminist movements in the Middle East & North Africa. Beginning with modern feminist thought and activism in mid-19th century Syria & Egypt, we'll trace feminist movements in various contemporary contexts, from Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon & Egypt in the 20th century, to women's participation in the Arab Spring and transnational Islamic movements in the 21st century. We'll map the local and geopolitical discourses that have shaped regional feminisms, and ask how local feminisms are transnational or global.

This course will look at a variety of canonical texts and genres from the Classical Arabic literary heritage and examine them through the question of "truth" and "representation." In a culture that is often said to frown upon fictional writing, we will explore attitudes towards language as a means of gaining knowledge about the world, on the one hand, and as a way to depict "reality," on the other. The texts we will be reading range from pre-Islamic poetry to 13th century shadow plays and cover a wide range of topics, including philosophy, mysticism, historiography, as well as Islamic science and art. Readings will be in English.

From the mid to late 20th century, Algeria has occupied a key position in the imagination of major world actors such as the Black Panthers, Viet Cong and George W. Bush administration. Yet, observers have often examined the global significance of events in the North African nation, namely its storied revolution against France, while neglecting Algerians' lived experiences of these same moments. This class re-centers attention on different Algerian communities' views of histories concerning their country from the rise of nationalism in the early 20th century through the ongoing 2019 Hirak movement within local, regional, and global frameworks.