Courses

Gender Politics of the Arab World

The aim of this course is to explore the ways in which the social and cultural construction of sexual difference shapes the politics of gender and sexuality in the Middle East and North Africa. Using interdisciplinary feminist theories, we will explore key issues and debates including the interaction of religion and sexuality, women’s movements, gender-based violence, queerness and gay/straight identities. Looking at the ways in which the Arab Spring galvanized what some have called a “gender revolution,” we will examine women’s roles in the various revolutions across the Arab World, and explore the varied and shifting gender dynamics in the region.

Contemporary Arab Cinema

This course will present an overview of contemporary Arab cinema, exploring the way in which this cinema reflects the dynamics of political, economic, and social change in modern Arab societies. The course will be conducted exclusively in Arabic and will involve reading texts that present an overview of contemporary Arab cinema as well as texts analyzing notable and award-winning Arabic films.

Arab Women’s Literature in Translation

In this course, we will explore writings by Arab women and will closely examine the major theoretical and political issues in the translation of texts from Arabic to English. We will look in particular at the intersection of gender, politics, and the legacy of Orientalism, exploring translation and reception, gender and genre, and categories of knowledge production about Arab women. In addition to an introduction to the major theories of translation studies, we will also explore feminist and postcolonial theories and methodologies for studying and understanding contemporary Arab women’s literature.

Gender & Migration in Modern Arabic Literature & Cinema

The study of migration and gender as intersecting areas of inquiry offers multiple possibilities for exploring modern Arabic literature and cinema. The modern Arab world is shaped by steady flows of migration and displacement, heavily influencing the literary and visual expression of the twentieth and twenty-first century. In this course we will attend to the formation of “gender” as a category of study, while also paying attention to class and religion as these center on and inform migration flows and displacement in the modern Arab world. We will study a number of novels and films that focus on the ways in which the “modern” in the Arab world is shaped and produced by migrations flows, displacement, and diasporas.

Blackness and the Arab Imaginary

Blackness as a category of analysis in the Middle East and North Africa, while fundamental to opening the field to the study of race and the legacies of slavery, remains understudied, deserving of critical attention. In this course, we will explore the historic and political category of “blackness” and examine how black identities are constructed in the cultural and epistemological production of the Arab world and the Arab Diaspora through literature, critical scholarship, music and cinema. We will address imperial and transnational dimensions of blackness as well as its increasing relevance for understanding new racial configurations in the contemporary Middle East and the Arab Diaspora.