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Spring 2010 MEALAC Courses
Please note that this information is subject to change. For further information, please visit the Registrar's Directory of Classes.
For updated information on our courses,
please visit the MESAAS Website.
The following designators appear in abbreviated form: MDES (Middle East), AHUM (Asian Humanities), ASCM (Asian Civilizations-Middle East), CLME (Comparative Literature-Middle East) and HSME (History-Middle East). These classes are open to both undergraduates and graduates.
ELEMENTARY TAMIL II
MDES W1102, D. Samuel Sudanandha
INTERMEDIATE TAMIL II
MDES W1202, D. Samuel Sudanandha
ARABIC HERITAGE SPEAKERS II
MDES W1209, Youssef Nouhi
FIRST YEAR ARABIC I
MDES W1210, Reem Faraj
FIRST YEAR ARABIC II
MDES W1211, Rym Bettaieb, Reem Faraj, Tarik Belhoussein, Ghada Badawi
SECOND YEAR ARABIC I
MDES W1214, Ouijdane Absi
SECOND YEAR ARABIC II
MDES W1215, Ghada Badawi, Ouijdane Absi, May Ahmar, Rym Bettaieb
ELEMENTARY ARMENIAN II
MDES W1311, Charry Karamanoukian
INTERMEDIATE WESTERN ARMENIAN I,
MDES W1312, Charry Karamanoukian
ELEMENTARY SANSKRIT II
MDES W1402, Som Dev Vasudeva
INTERMEDIATE SANSKRIT II
MDES W1405, Elaine M Fisher
1ST YR MOD HEBREW:ELEM II
MDES W1511
2ND YR MOD HEBREW:INTER II
MDES W1513, Nehama R Bersohn
2ND YR MOD HEBR:UPPER INT II
MDES W1515, Nehama R Bersohn
INT HEBREW:INTENSVE GRAMMAR REV
MDES W1516
HINDI FOR HERITAGE SPEAKERS II
MDES W1609, Rakesh Ranjan
ELEMENTARY HINDI-URDU II
MDES W1611, Rakesh Ranjan, Dalpat Rajpurohit, Suman Mallipattana
INTERMEDIATE HINDI-URDU II
MDES W1613, Dalpat Rajpurohit
ELEMENTARY PERSIAN II
MDES W1711, Ghazzal Dabiri
INTERMEDIATE PERSIAN II
MDES W1713, Ghazzal Dabiri
ELEMENTARY MODERN TURKISH II
MDES W1911, Etem Erol
INTERMEDIATE MODERN TURKISH II
MDES W1913, Etem Erol
CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
ASCM V2008, George A Saliba
Lecture and recitation. No previous study of Islam is required. The contemporary Islamic world studied through freshly translated texts; recorded interviews with religious, political, and intellectual leaders; and films highlighting the main artistic and cultural currents. Topics include religion and society, religion and politics, issues of development, theories of government, gender issues, East-West confrontation, theatre, arts, films, poetry, music, and the short novel.
PALESTINIAN AND ISRAELI POLITICS AND SOCIETY
MDES W3042, Joseph A Massad
The History of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskala) in 19th century Europe and the development of Zionism through the current "peace process" between the state of Israel and the Arab states and the Palestinian national movement. Provides a historical overview of the Zionist-Palestinian conflict to familiarize undergraduates with the background of the current situation.
ZIONISM: A CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
MDES W3541, Dan Miron
The course, based on Zionist texts of various kinds, will offer a view of Zionism as a cultural revolution aimed at redefining Judaism and the Jewish Identity.
EARLY ARMENIAN LITERATURE: THE FIFTH CENTURY
MDES W3926, Nanor Kebranian
Using scholarly translations of the major texts of the Armenian Golden Age alongside secondary theoretical and critical works, this course will offer a focused introduction to the origins of the Armenian literary tradition emerging in the fifth century. In addition to familiarizing students with these foundation texts’ contextual origins, methodologies and historical content, the course will also invite them to assess their significance in broader conceptual terms, considering the national, cultural and historical elements concerning their reception throughout the ages. All readings will be in English and English translation.
SCIENCE ACROSS CULTURES
INSM C3940, George A Saliba
Open to seniors and some qualified juniors. Priority given to seniors. Development of scientific thought from various cultures and from antiquity till the time of the European Renaissance. Provides examples of the process by which scientific thinking has developed and illustrates that although science may not have always developed in a linear fashion, the problems science was called upon to solve exhibited a continuity that crossed cultural, linguistic, and religious borders. Global Core.
POSTCOLONIAL AFRICAN CITIES
MDES W3951, Rosalind Fredericks
This seminar considers postcolonial African cities in historical and geographical perspective. Drawing from diverse literatures, including geography, history, anthropology, cultural studies, and development studies, it offers an interdisciplinary approach to reflect on experiences of urbanization on the continent and the socio-economic, cultural, and political aspects of contemporary African urban life.
CULTURE & POWER IN IRAQI LIT
CLME G4106, Muhsin Al-Musawi
This course attempts to meet the increasing need to know Iraqi culture. Through a number of typical Iraqi texts since the Epic of Gilgamesh, the question of power relations and cultural dynamics will be a way to map out an intellectual itinerary of the most ancient civilization and its subsequent histories until the modern period.
THIRD YEAR ARABIC II
MDES W4211, May Ahmar, Youssef Nouhi
4TH YR ARABIC II: MODERN PROSE
MDES W4213, Taoufik Ben-Amor
4TH YR ARABIC II:CLASS PROSE
MDES W4214, Taoufik Ben-Amor
ISLAMIC CONTEXT ARABIAN NIGHTS
CLME G4227, Muhsin Al-Musawi
Prerequisites: No prior knowledge of Arabic language is required. This course questions the popular assumption that the tales of the Thousand and One Nights lack any Islamic content and that their fantastic or erotic dimensions are the only dynamic narrative components behind the vogue. This collection is read against a number of contemporaneous writings (in English translation), including al-Hamadan's Manama, to discuss issues that relate to market inspectorships, economy, social order, marginal groups like the mad, the use of public space including the hammed, and the position on fate, destiny, time, afterlife, sex and love. The course takes its starting point from classical Arabic narratives, poetry and epistolary art and follows up the growth of this repository as it conveys, reveals, or debates Islamic tenets and jurists' stand. The course aspires to provide students with a solid and wide range of information and knowledge on Islamic culture since the emergence of the Islamic center in Baghdad (b. 762). Students are expected to develop a critical method and insightful analysis in dealing with the text, its contemporaneous works from among the belletristic tradition and popular lore, its adaptations, and use and misuse in Arabic culture since the ninth century.
ARAB SOCIETY & CULTURE
MDES G4244, Soraya Altorki
This course is intended for upper division undergraduate and graduate students. It introduces the student to the major social and cultural issues of the Arab world, as examined through various theoretical perspectives in the anthropological and sociological literature. It is hoped that the course will provide the student with the analytical tools s/he needs to take more specialized courses on the general topic.
ISLAMIC LAW: THREE DEBATES
MDES G4253, Wael Hallaq
Prerequisites: ASCM V2003 or equivalent. This seminar deals with three paradigmatic sets of questions in the history of Islamic law, each set representing and encompassing key themes pertaining to three important historical phases. Long-standing debates on the "origins" of the Shari'a will be explored, as will the constitution of the formative period, which is variably claimed to stretch from two to four centuries. Scholarship on this period will be examined as ideology. In the second set of questions, squarely situated in the post-formative period (ca. 11th - 17th c.) we examine the relationship between and among social custom, juridical practice and formal legal doctrine, discussing in outline the structural mechanisms the Shari'a has developed to accommodate legal change. Scholarship on this period and on what the features of this period came to represent in the overall constructed history of the Shari'a will also be examined as ideology. In the third set of questions, we analyze so-called legal reform and the role of state in converting the Shari'a to a modern institution that is qualitatively different from its pre-modern predecessor. Scholarship on the Shari'a in the modern period will also be examined as ideology. Finally, but not necessarily at the end of the course, we will pose questions about the nature of interpretation and language in the construction of a paradigmatic idea (and history) of the Shari'a.
CASE OF ARMENIANS IN TURKEY
MDES W4324, Melissa Bilal
This course aims at reconsidering the concept of "displacement" in multiple levels, especially focusing on music and memory. Its major objective is to develop critical perspectives to discuss the conditions of "being displaced" and "being at home" in relation to the minoritized groups' experiences within nationalized territories. Lectures will have a special emphasis on the Armenian community of Istanbul.
3RD YR MODERN HEBREW II
MDES W4511, Ruth Raphaeli-Slivko
READINGS IN HEBREW TEXTS II
MDES W4513, Ruth Raphaeli-Slivko
THE CULTURE OF ISRAELI CINEMA
MDES G4542, Uri Cohen
The goal of this class is to provide an introduction to the history of Israeli cinema whose interpretation and discussion will also be an in-depth discussion of the main issues engaged by Israeli culture. Cinema provides an interesting vantage point to approach to Israeli culture, as it always expresses a social point of view and its history not only represents the major issues Israel has dealt with since its creation, but is in itself a history of the struggle for hegemony within Israeli culture and society. Each meeting will include an in class screening of one of the major works of Israeli cinema beginning in the 1950's and leading up to "Beaufort" and "Waltzing With Bashir". Preparation for class will consist of the reading of literary and scholarly texts that provide some of the context for the movies and the issues debated within. Discussion will be based on "Reading" cinema as a complex text that allows insight not only to the issues but to the very fabric of their discourses.
READINGS IN HINDI LIT I
MDES W4610, Susham Bedi
HINDI-URDU: AN OVERVIEW
MDES W4613, Frances Pritchett
Prerequisites: Completion of Intermediate Hindi-Urdu or consent of instructor. A review and overview of the shared Khari Boli grammar, of both scripts, and of the linguistic and literary history of Hindi-Urdu. The course will solidify your knowledge, introduce you to new resources, and prepare you to do scholarly work in either script. Students will have a chance to plan and conduct a number of 'TBA' class hours according to their own interests; these classes are usually very enjoyable.
READINGS IN URDU LIT II
MDES W4636, Frances Pritchett
ADVANCED SANSKRIT II
MDES W4812, Som Dev Vasudeva
ADVANCED TURKISH II
MDES W4911, Cenk Palaz
LATE OTTOMAN STATE & SOCIETY
MDES W4940, Nader Sohrabi
PAN AFRICANISM: FREN&FRANCOPHONE PERSP
MDES G6144, Mamadou Diouf
This seminar explores how Black leaders, intellectuals, and artists chose to imagine Blacks (African and people of African descent) as a global community from the late 19th century to the present. It examines their attempts to chart a course of race, modernity and emancipation in instable and changing geographies of empire, nation, and state. Particular attention will be given to manifestations identified as their common history and destiny and how such a distinctive historical experience have created a unique body of reflections on and cultural productions about modernity, race, religion, class, gender and sexuality, in a context of domination and oppression.
SEM:STUDIES IN MOD ARABIC LIT
CLME G6231, Noha Radwan
This is a course designed to help students who are at the high intermediate and advanced level of reading in Arabic language to read modern Arabic literary works, in both poetry and prose. Class discussions will focus on the qualities and subtleties of these works that might be lost in translation.
THE MODERN STATE & THE COLONIAL SUBJECT
MDES G6406, Mahmood Mamdani
This seminar on the development of legal thought on the colonial subject will read and discuss texts focusing on three different
historical periods: the 16th and 17th century conquest of native peoples in the New World, the subjugation of British India
(the Dutch East Indies and the Malay states) before and after the 1857 Uprising, and the conquest of southern and tropical Africa in the
19th and 20th centuries. Participation is limited to 20 to be admitted after the first class.
JEWISH WRITING & MODERNISM
MDES G6524, Dan Miron
This seminar forms part of an extended seminar focusing on the view that what was often referred to as "The Modern Jewish Literature" or "The Modern Jewish Canon" does not exist. As a matter of fact, it is doubtful that a unified Jewish culture and a one, comprehensive Jewish literature, ever existed (after Biblical times). Modernity, however, clearly and blatantly fragmented Jewish cultural life and creativity, and what Jewish literary production throughout the last two hundred and fifty years amounts to is not a continuous "Jewish" canon but rather a welter of competitive, and often mutually exclusive Jewish literary canons of various kinds: some defining their parameters within nationalist ideologies and written in Jewish languages, and some developing a mentality of "dual citizenship." Writing in various non-Jewish languages and addressing a non Jewish readership, some (not all) Jewish writers also wrote as Jews (and to a certain extent, for Jews). Together these modern Jewish literary traditions form a complex that can be studied and understood in terms of contiguity rather than those of continuity. The purpose of the seminar is to explore the dynamics and parameters of this Jewish literary contiguity. It would be done in a series of one-semester graduate seminars, each focusing on a different aspect of this very comprehensive topic. The languages all students would be expected to know are Hebrew and English, although texts originally written in Yiddish, German, Russian and other languages would be used (in English and Hebrew translations).
POSTCOLONIAL THEORY
MDES G6600, Hamid Dabashi
This course will go over some philosophical and interpretative problems raised by recent works in a field described as 'postcolonial theory'. It will start with the original debates about 'Orientalism' - particularly its critical arguments about the question of representation of the Orient in art and literature, the question of the writing of history, and the logic of basic concepts in the social sciences. The course will analyse some 'Orientalist' texts in detail, assess the criticisms offered by postcolonial writers, and take up these three problems - of representation, history and conceptualization for detailed, rigorous critical discussion.
MIDDLE EAST RESEARCH COLLOQ
MDES G8101, Timothy Mitchell
This course is open to all graduate students conducting research on aspects of the modern history, culture and politics of the Middle East. Students preparing a dissertation chapter, MA thesis, M. Phil examination field, PhD. prospectus or similar project will develop and present a draft of their work. We will choose additional readings to accompany each presentation, focusing on scholarship that informs or extends the issues addressed in the research. The aim of the colloquium is to enable students to clarify and test the questions that shape their work and to better situate it within current methodological and theoretical debates.
STDY GEN/SEXUALITY-ARAB WORLD
MDES G8280, Joseph A Massad
This course aims to familiarize graduate students with the different methods and approaches that U.S. and European scholars have used to study gender and sexuality in other societies generally, and the way they study them in the context of the Arab world specifically.
ELEMENTARY KANNADA II
KANA W1102 / Instructor: Suman Mallipattana
ELEMENTARY SWAHILI II
SWHL W1102 / Instructors: Jane Clayton, Membezi J. Inniss
INTERMEDIATE SWAHILI II
SWHL W1202 / Instructor: Membezi J. Inniss
ADVANCED SWAHILI II
SWHL W3336 / Instructor: Membezi J. Inniss
ELEMENTARY WOLOF II
WOLF W1102 / Instructor: Mariame Sy
INTERMEDIATE WOLOF II
WOLF W1202 / Instructor: Mariame Sy
ELEMENTARY ZULU II
ZULU W1102 / Instructor: John Zuzo
INTERMEDIATE ZULU II
ZULU W1202 / Instructor: John Zuzo
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