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Fall 2009 MEALAC Courses
Please note that this information is subject to change. For further information, please visit the Registrar's Directory of Classes.
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.
ARABIC FOR HERITAGE SPEAKERS I
MDES W1208 / Instructor: Youssef Nouhi
FIRST YEAR ARABIC I
MDES W1210
FIRST YEAR ARABIC II
MDES W1211
SECOND YEAR ARABIC I
MDES W1214
SECOND YEAR ARABIC II
MDES W1215
ELEMENTARY ARMENIAN I
MDES W1310 / Instructor: Charry Karamanoukian
ELEMENTARY SANSKRIT I
MDES W1401 / Instructor: Som Dev Vasudeva
INTERMEDIATE SANSKRIT I
MDES W1404 / Instructor: Som Dev Vasudeva
FIRST YEAR MODERN HEBREW: ELEMENTARY I
MDES W1510
This is an introductory course for which no prior knowledge is required. Equal emphasis is given to listening, speaking, reading, writing and grammar. Daily homework includes grammar exercises, short answers, reading, or paragraph writing. Frequent vocabulary and grammar quizzes.
SECOND YEAR MODERN HEBREW: INTERMEDIATE I
MDES W1512 / Instructor: Nehama R Bersohn
Prerequisites: Prerequisite: MDES W1511 or the equivalent. Students who completed First Year Hebrew at Columbia are required to enroll in section 1. New students are placed in section 1 or 2, based on their performance on the placement test. Equal emphasis is given to listening, speaking, reading and writing. Regular categories of the Hebrew verb, prepositions, and basic syntax are taught systematically. Vocabulary building. Daily homework includes grammar exercises, short answers, reading, or short compositions. Frequent vocabulary and grammar quizzes.
SECOND YEAR MODERN HEBREW:UPPER INTERMEDIATE I
MDES W1514 / Instructor: Nehama R Bersohn
Prerequisites: For students who acquired basic knowledge of the language in Hebrew School, and received appropriate scores on the placement test. Equal emphasis is given to listening, speaking, reading and writing. Regular Hebrew verbs, prepositions, and syntax are taught systematically. Vocabulary building. Daily homework includes grammar exercises, short answers, reading, listening to web-casts, or short compositions. Frequent vocabulary and grammar quizzes.
HINDI FOR HERITAGE SPEAKERS I
MDES W1608 / Instructor: Rakesh Ranjan
This is an accelerated course for students of South Asian origin who already possess a knowledge of basic vocabulary and limited speaking and listening skills in Hindi. They may not have sufficient skills in reading and writing but are able to converse on familiar topics such as: self, family, likes, dislikes and immediate surroundings. This course will focus on developing knowledge of the basic grammar of Hindi and vocabulary enrichment by exposing students to a variety of cultural and social topics related to aspects of daily life; and formal and informal registers. Students will be able to read and discuss simple texts and write about a variety of everyday topics by the end of the semester.
ELEMENTARY HINDI-URDU I
MDES W1610 / Instructors: Rakesh Ranjan, Dalpat Rajpurohit
INTERMEDIATE HINDI-URDU I
MDES W1612 / Instructor: Dalpat Rajpurohit
ELEMENTARY PERSIAN I
MDES W1710 / Instructor: Ghazzal Dabiri
INTERMEDIATE PERSIAN I
MDES W1712 / Instructor: Ghazzal Dabiri
ELEMENTARY MODERN TURKISH I
MDES W1910 / Instructor: Etem Erol
INTERMEDIATE MODERN TURKISH I
MDES W1912 / Instructor: Etem Erol
INTRO TO ISLAMIC CIVILIZATION
ASCM V2003 / Instructor: George A Saliba
Lecture and recitation. Islamic civilization and its characteristic political, social, and religious institutions and intellectual traditions.
INTRO TO ISLAMIC CIV-REC
ASCM V2113
THEOR-CULTURE: MID EAST/S ASIA
MDES W3000 / Instructor: Hamid Dabashi
Required of all majors. Introduces theories of culture particularly related to the Middle East and South Asia. Theoretical debates on the nature and function of culture as a symbolic reading of human collectivities. Examines critical cultural studies of the Middle East and South Asia. Enables students to articulate their emerging knowledge of Middle East and Asian cultures in a theoretically informed language.
SUPERVISED READINGS I
MDES W3001 / Notes: SIGN UP FOR SECTIONS IN DEPT.
COLONIALSM:FILM, FICTION, HISTORY/THEORY
CLME W3032 / Instructor: Hamid Dabashi
This course is intended as a Global Core Requirement, introducing Columbia College students to the global phenomenon of colonialism in a broadly introductory, interdisciplinary, and temporally and spatially expansive way. As all other courses in the Global Core, this introductory course to the global phenomenon of Colonialism is organized around a set of primary texts - in film, fiction, history, autobiography, and theory - produced in or about the regions of the world in which colonialism has had an impact. The purpose of this course is to introduce students to a wide range of cinematic, fictional, historical, autobiographical, and theoretical sources on the global and cross-cultural phenomenon of colonialism.
RETHINKING MIDDLE EAST POLITICS
MDES W3260 / Instructor: Timothy Mitchell
This course examines a set of questions that have shaped the study of the politics of the modern Middle East. It looks at the main ways those questions have been answered, exploring debates both in Western academic scholarship and among scholars and intellectuals in the region itself. For each question, the course offers new ways of thinking about the issue or ways of framing it in different terms. The topics covered in the course include: the kinds of modern state that emerged in the Middle East and the ways its forms of power and authority were shaped; the birth of "economic development" as a way of describing the function and measuring the success of the state, and the changing metrics of this success; the influence of oil on the politics of the region; the nature and role of Islamic political movements; the transformation of the countryside and the city and the role of rural populations and of urban protest in modern politics; and the politics of armed force and political violence in the region, and the ways in which this has been understood. The focus of the course will be on the politics of the twentieth century, but many topics will be traced back into developments that occurred in earlier periods, and several will be explored up to the present. The course is divided into four parts, each ending with a paper or exam in which participants are asked to analyze the material covered. Each part of the course has a geographical focus on a country or group of countries and a thematic focus on a particular set of questions of historical and political analysis. Discussion Section Required.
MAJOR TEXTS: INDIA
AHUM V3399 / Instructor: Sheldon Pollock
INTRO TO ISRAELI LITERATURE
MDES W3542 / Instructor: Dan Miron
CULTURE IN THE MODERN ARAB WORLD
MDES W3920 / Instructor: Joseph A Massad Prerequisites: Instructor Permission This seminar, designed for seniors, aims to acquaint students with the notion and theoretical understanding of culture and to introduce them to a critical method by which they can study and appreciate contemporary culture in the Arab World. The seminar will survey examples of written and cinematic culture (fiction and autobiography), as well as music, dance, and literary criticism in the contemporary Arab world. Students will be reading novels, autobioghraphies and literary criticism, as well as watch films and listen to music as part of the syllabus. All material will be in translation. Films will be subtitled. Songs will be in Arabic.
INTRO TO WESTERN ARMENIAN LITERATURE
MDES W3925 / Instructor: Nanor Kenderian
A broad introduction to the major stages, movements and works of Western Armenian literature from its "inception" in the Ottoman Empire to its contemporary Diasporic variations.
THEORY & METHODS-MID EAST & ASIA
MDES G4000 / Instructor: Sudipta Kaviraj
Prerequisites: the instructor's permission. Explores recent studies on the Middle East with explicitly stated theoretical orientations that may be grouped under three broad catagories of nationalism, discipline, and power and resistance. Methodologies as diverse as comparative method, post-structuralism, narrative, and ethnography are not investigated in the abstract but in the context of rich empirical case studies.
THEMES IN THE NOVELS OF THE MIDDLE EAST, AFRICA, & SOUTH ASIA: FICTION OF POST COLONIALISM
CLME W4024 / Instructor: Noha Radwan
This course offers a reading of a selection of novels from the Middle East, India and Africa that represent, interrogate and challenge the colonialist and post-independence history of their nations and regions. It has long been understood that colonial domination was achieved through the deployment of more than brute force. It was not only power, but also colonialist knowledge that became the foundations of European hegemony over the colonial world. It has also become a matter of little debate that post-colonial societies are still, to varying degrees, subject to overt or subtle forms of neo-colonial domination. The course examines the complex processes by which the writers of the Middle East, South Asia and Africa suffer, resist and ultimately try to extricate their cultures and societies from the legacy of colonialism. Novels in both English and English translations will constitute the primary reading material for this course. They will be supplemented by a selection of theoretical and critical readings
LOCATING AFRICA IN 20TH CENTURY WORLD
HSME G4052 / Instructors: Mamadou Diouf and Jinny K Prais
During the early twentieth century the meaning of Africa and its location within the "universal" historical narrative was a source of discussion and debate among western and African elites. In this seminar, we will study the ways that African and people of African descent participated in this discussion. Through primary and secondary readings, we will learn about how African, African American and European writers, artists and activists engaged and (re) interpreted imperial and international resources (including the insights of the new sciences of Man) to (re)imagine their political and social situations, and to participate in various political expressions , including surrealism, pan-Africanism, communism, feminism, black internationalism, and anti-imperialism.
We will also engage critically debates (e.g., Egyptianisms and Ethiopianisms) and theoretical developments in African, imperial, transnational, international and global scholarship that seeks to understand the complex traffic of people and ideas across national and imperial boundaries.
GLOBAL POLITICAL THOUGHT: GANDHI, IQBAL, NEHRU, SENGHOR
MDES G4062 / Instructors: Sudipta Kaviraj and Akeel Bilgrami and Souleymane Diagne
This course is intended to explore important themes in modern political thought from texts taken from traditions outside the modern West. It will not be devoted to textual exegesis, but use as sites of exploration central questions of modern politics. The attempt will be not merely to grasp what these thinkers thought, but to think more widely with and through their texts. The course will focus on the works of M K Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohammad Iqbal, and Leopold Senghor. It will involve reading assigned texts and critical and comparative analysis of their theoretical ideas.
THIRD YEAR ARABIC I
MDES W4210
4TH YR ARABIC I: MOD PROSE
MDES W4212 / Instructor: Taoufik Ben-Amor
ADVANCED ARABIC GRAMMAR REVIEW
MDES W4215 / Instructor: Taoufik Ben-Amor
Through reading and writing, students will review Arabic Grammar concepts within the context of linguistic functions such as narration, description, comparison, etc. For example, within the function of narration, students will focus on verb tenses, word order, and adverbials. Based on error analysis in the past twelve years that the Arabic Program has been using Al-Kitaab, emphasis will be placed on common and frequent grammatical errors. Within these linguistic functions and based on error analysis, the course will review the following main concepts:
Types of sentence and sentence/clause structure.The Verb system, pattern meanings and verb complementation.Quadriliteral verb patterns and derivations.Weak Verbs derivations, conjugation, tense frames and negation.Case endings.Types of noun and participle: Noun of time, place, instance, stance, instrument, active and passive participles.Types of construct phrase: al-iDafa.Types of Adverbials and verb complements: Hal, Tamyiz, Maf'ul mutlaq, Maf'ul li'ajlihi, adverbs of time, frequency, place and manner.The number system and countable nouns.Types of maa.Diptotes, al-mamnu' min-aSSarf.
ARABIC SELF-NARRATIVES: Secular Autobiography and Its Writers' Predicament
CLME G4226 / Instructor: Muhsin Al-Musawi
This course studies a number of autobiographical works; memoirs and reminiscences that are meant to rationalize and sell a writer's experience. Although repressed accounts, these serve as trajectories for a secular journey rather than one from denial to affirmation. Staunchly established in modernity and its nahda paradigms, most of these writings are secular itineraries that rarely search for faith. They are the journeys of a generation of Arab intellectuals who are facing many crises, but not the crisis of faith. They provide another look at the making of the Arab intelligentsia since the early 20th century and help us discerning the pitfalls and failures, along with successes, that have been wrapping the nation state.
ISLAM ON THE STREET: The Religious Dynamic in Modern Arabic Literary Production
CLME G4261 / Instructor: Muhsin Al-Musawi
This course questions the whole idea of Arab modernity which is usually associated with the nahda or Arab awakening at the turn of the nineteenth century. Through close analysis of texts, poetry, narrative, travelogue and memoirs, it argues that the bane of modernity is its subordination to a Western ideal that minimizes or even negates its engagement with Islamic and Arab tradition. The nation state and through codification processes and as led by the intelligentsia forged a social program that is no less divested of tradition and rural culture. Only after 1967, the unsettling experience of total bankruptcy, that intellectuals question the dichotomies of science versus religion and the myth of progress versus tradition. New writings take to the street where they find substance and faith that has been ignored for long under cultural dependency. These works receive due attention in relation to theoretical studies that increase readers' critical insight.
3RD YR MODERN HEBREW I
MDES W4510 / Instructor: Ruth Raphaeli-Slivko
Prerequisites: Hebrew W1513 or W1515 or the instructor's permission. Students are expected to have basic familiarity with regular and irregular verbs in five categories of the Hebrew verb system: Pa'al, Pi'el, Hif'il, Hitpa'el and Nif'al. The course focuses on vocabulary building and on development of reading skills, using adapted literary and journalistic texts with and without vowels. Verb categories of Pu'al and Huf'al are taught systematically. Other verb forms are reviewed in context. A weekly hour is devoted to practice in conversation. Daily homework includes reading, short answers, compositions, listening to web-casts, and giving short oral presentations via voice e-mail. Frequent vocabulary quizzes.
FOURTH YR MOD HEBR: READINGS
MDES W4512 / Instructor: Ruth Raphaeli-Slivko
Prerequisites: MDES W4511 or MDES W1515 or MDES W1516 or the instructor's permission. Students are expected to have a good familiarity with the Hebrew verb system, and the ability to read a text without vowels. This is an advanced course focusing on the development of reading skills using authentic, un-adapted literary, journalistic and academic texts. Verb forms are reviewed in context. In addition to the texts read by the whole class, each student completes two independent reading projects in areas of his/her interest. A weekly hour is devoted to practice in conversation. Daily homework includes reading, composition, listening to web-casts, or giving short oral presentations via voice e-mail. Frequent vocabulary quizzes. Two five page term reports on the independent readings.
READINGS IN HINDI-URDU LIT
MDES W4612 / Instructor: Allison Busch
Prerequisites: Two years of Hindi-Urdu, or permission of the instructor. This course introduces a range of modern Hindi-Urdu literary texts and trends. From the late nineteenth century Hindi and Urdu authors experimented with genres like the short story and novel, which had been imported through colonial contact, creating a rich array of new (and sometimes hybrid) literary offerings. In this course we read select authors from the canon of modern fiction, while also touching on the most salient literary historical and cultural currents taking place in the world outside the texts. Students will also be exposed to select works of secondary literature and a few genres and poets of historical importance. Students develop their skills in reading, writing, speaking and listening, as well as working with advanced grammar topics and learning new idioms. While it is preferred that all students develop their skills in both Hindi and Urdu scripts, students who know only one script may also be admitted to the course with the permission of the instructor.
MUGHAL INDIA
MDES G4652 / Instructor: Allison Busch
Notes: FOR SENIOR & GRAD STUDENTS OR WITH INSTRUCTOR'S PERMISSION
The Mughal period was one of the most dynamic eras in world history, when India was the meeting place of many cultures. Of Timurid ancestry, the earliest Mughal rulers drew upon the heritage of Central Asia in their ruling styles and cultural practices, but they would soon adapt to the complexities of their Indian milieu, which had longstanding traditions that were a blend of Sanskrit and Persian, Hindu and Muslim idioms. European culture, whether filtered through Jesuit sermons, itinerant merchants, or Flemish engravings, was also making inroads into India during this period. This course is a broad cultural history of Mughal India as seen from a range of perspectives and sources. We consider the Mughals' major achievements in visual culture as manifested in painting and architecture, as well as exploring diverse topics in religion, literature, politics, and historiography. Yet another approach is to listen to the voices of the Mughal rulers as recorded in their memoirs, as well as investigating the signal contributions of the dynasty's women.
ADVANCED PERSIAN I
MDES W4710 / Instructor: Ghazzal Dabiri
ADVANCED SANSKRIT I
MDES W4810 / Instructor: Sheldon Pollock
ADVANCED TURKISH I
MDES W4910
INTERMEDIATE OTTOMAN TURKISH
MDES G4918 / Instructor: Nader Sohrabi
BEGINNING OTTOMAN TURKISH
MDES W4921 / Instructor: Nader Sohrabi
CONSTITUTIONALISM, ATATURK & REZA SHAH
HSME G4941 / Instructor: Nader Sohrabi
The emergence of modern Turkey and Iran has been linked to two strong figures of Ataturk and Reza Shah. Depicted as "men of order," they have been held responsible for the major transformations associated with the rise of the modern nation states of Turkey and Iran. This course critically examines the legacy of these two leaders by placing them within the long term history of social and political transformations in the Ottoman Empire and Iran in the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Particular emphasis will be placed on the relationship between the emergence of these leaders and the constitutional movements that preceded them. Of interest here is the degree to which they were in continuity with, a reaction to, or a break from these movements. Of further interest is the creation of modern citizenship, authoritarianism, commitment to constitutionalism, radical reforms from above, rise of the middle class, social and political programs directed toward homogenization, and republicanism.
READINGS IN CLASSICAL ARABIC I
MDES G6210 / Instructor: George A Saliba
Readings and analysis of texts, with discussion of the nature and development of the genres within the context of Islamic thought. One genre covered each term.
MODERN JEWISH LITERARY COMPLEX
MDES G6522 / Instructor: Dan Miron
SUPERVISED READING I
MDES G8000 / Notes: SIGN UP FOR SECTIONS IN DEPT.
PSYCHOANALYSIS, IDENTITY & CULTURE
MDES G8206 / Instructor: Joseph A Massad
This graduate seminar aims to introduce students to Freud and Freudian Psychoanalysis and the integration of both in critical theory. The main question the seminar aims to study is the formation of identity in psychoanalysis and how it relates to civilization and culture more generally, whether in its gender, sexual, or national configurations. The influence of Social Darwinism and Developmentalism more generally on Freudian psychoanalysis will be discussed as well as the importance of related temporal concepts deployed in psychoanalysis' insistence on the divide between primitivism and culture. We will discuss a number of major scholarly works engaging Freud's theories on all these questions and their relevance to social and cultural analysis.
SOUTH ASIA RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM
MDES G8620 / Instructors: Sheldon Pollock and Allison Busch
Notes: CLASS MEETS ALTERNATE WEEKS
This course is open to all graduate students working on any aspect of the South Asia humanities. Students will present their research in progress, choosing one or two historical or theoretical readings to accompany the draft of their work (this can be a dissertation chapter or MA essay in progress, an honors thesis, a seminar paper, or the like). Our focus will be on clarifying the object of study, testing the methodology employed, and situating the research within current historical and theoretical discussions.
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