Spring 2014 MESAAS Courses

Islamic civilization and its characteristic political, social, and religious institutions and intellectual traditions from its pre-Islamic Arabian setting to the present. Lecture and recitation. Islamic civilization and its characteristic political, social, and religious institutions and intellectual traditions.

This course will provide a historical and thematic introduction to Indian cinema, with a particular focus on the theme of city in Hindi language Indian popular cinema, which has recently become known more commonly as Bollywood. Since the inception of the medium, cinema has proved to have a special capacity to understand and respond to urbanism and modernity. Bringing together a range of cinematic practices and urban experiences, we will study how the imagined city becomes the site of the rhythms and movements of modern South Asia - from a space of possibility (conjugal relations and social mobility), to site of urban poverty, religious and sectarian violence, caste and gender politics, class ghettoization, and migration.

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.

Readings in translation and discussion of texts of Middle Eastern and Indian origin. Readings include the Qur'an, Islamic philosophy, Sufi poetry, the Upanishads, Buddhist sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, Indian epics and drama, and Gandhi's Autobiography.

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.

This is a one-year course that begins in the fall semester (1 point) and continues through the spring semester (3 points). Only students who have completed both semesters will receive the full 4 points of credit. Prerequisites: Minimum GPA of 3.5 in MESAAS courses. The MESAAS honors seminar offers students the opportunity to undertake a sustained research project under close faculty supervision. The DUS advises on general issues of project design, format, approach, general research methodologies, and timetable. In addition, students work with an individual advisor who has expertise in the area of the thesis and can advise on the specifics of method and content. The thesis will be jointly evaluated by the adviser, the DUS, and the honors thesis TA. The DUS will lead students through a variety of exercises that are directly geared to facilitating the thesis. Students build their research, interpretive, and writing skills; discuss methodological approaches; write an annotated bibliography; learn to give constructive feedback to peers and respond to feedback effectively. The final product is a polished research paper in the range of 40-60 pages.

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.

This graduate seminar will expose students to major themes and issues in the study of South Asia. The course will provide a serious intellectual foundation for students wishing to pursue specialized, directed research in the region. Themes for consideration include: cultural history and early modernity; capitalism and political economy; genealogies of political thought; anticolonialism; caste and religion; and gender and feminist history.

This seminar examines Sufism and Society in West Africa considering three periods: the pre-colonial, the colonial, and the postcolonial. Islam has been have been global and uneven, and has operated with various effects across and within different African regions and communities. Its focus is the intersection of politics, society and geography. Using colonialism, empire, and globalization as key analytical frames of the interactions of religion and society, the seminar explores (a) the multiple geographies of the expansion of and resistance to Islam as well its accommodation and revision and (b) the histories of cultures forms, politics, economies and representations which are shaped by – and have been shaping the various ways in which religion is publicly and privately performed.

This 4000 level seminar course is organized around weekly readings that represent substantial contributions to the debate about both 'modernity' and 'postcolonial experience' in Africa, from a range of interrelated disciplinary perspectives. In readings and discussions, we will keep the relationship between the two main discursive fields in view, and also (re-)consider the ongoing relevance of colonialism and colonial experiences in relation to them. Conceptual reflections on modernity and postcolonial experience(s) need to be based upon empirical research, and underpinned by regional socio-historical knowledge of the settings and scenarios discussed - there is no 'modernity' per se and no 'postcolonial experience' as such. We will involve comparative, historical and contemporary angles of discussion, and pursue an interest in critical conceptualization in relation to social and political realities in Africa, and with a view to African thinkers.

The course explores cold war strategies and effects in Arab culture, 1950-1991, in comparison with similar applications and methods in other parts of the world. A stage and volatile space, Arab culture of the cold war period presents a case of significant engagements with and implications for the rest of the world. While acquainting students with the emergence, implementation and impact of the cold war as pervasive strategic penetration into arts, literature, and education, especially during the heyday of cold war politics.

This is a one-semester course for those upper level undergraduate and graduate students who have an advanced level of proficiency in Hindi. This course is designed to develop students’ pedagogical and analytical skills in Hindi and to prepare them to teach Hindi in the language classroom. It aims to review grammatical and socio-cultural features of Hindi and expose students to pedagogical methodologies and practices of Hindi. Topics include teaching grammar (inflectional and derivational features of nominal and verbal phrases, types of clauses, and syntactic features of simple and complex sentences), registers, and communicative competence. It will discuss student-centered learning, task-based learning, and the use of technology in teaching, and methods for working with different categories of learners at the beginning, intermediate, and advanced levels. One collective activity will be to review and analyze current textbooks and web resources so that students are fully familiar with existing materials and engage critically with current pedagogical practice. At the end of the course, students will understand key issues in Hindi language pedagogy, learn to develop lesson plans, design a curriculum and teach a Hindi class independently.

This course engages with the history of early modern India (c. 1500-1800) through the analytic lenses of gender, culture and power with an emphasis on Persianate contexts. Our main question is how the analytics of gender and sexuality can illuminate issues surrounding culture and power in India. Conversely, we explore how early modern Indian contexts challenge the assumptions of theoretical works on gender and sexuality. The topics we consider include the politics of history writing, mysticism, self-fashioning, imperial self-figuring, the ethics and aesthetics of morality, love, heroism, homosocial relations and homoerotic practices. To this end, we read theoretical works, recent scholarly studies and an array of primary sources such as memoirs, moral exempla, historical chronicles, monuments, paintings, Sufi sayings (malfuzat), epic literature, moral philosophy, and political advice literature.

The purpose of this seminar is to investigate the theoretical and historical dimension of Colonialism as one of the most vociferous forces of change in modernity. The seminar is intended primarily for graduate students. Advanced undergraduate students will be considered only after interview. In this course, we will follow two simultaneous tracks: As we explore various theoretical issues concerning colonialism, we will equally navigate the historical manifestations of this force in various continental contexts. The course is heavily investigative, research-based, and bibliography-oriented. We are primarily after an investigation of the economic and social changes that preceded and followed colonialism.

A reading course on Literary Theory and Social Theory for students and faculty of MESAAS and the broader Columbia community from the Humanities and Social Sciences, which will take up in greater detail some of the issues of Literary and Social Theories and employ them to think on the research topics of the participants in the seminar. The course is conceived as part of an ongoing project that will acquaint students, who are seriously interested in literary theory, with these thinkers and theoretical traditions in greater depth and detail. The course that will take place this fall will concentrate on works by Walter Benjamin and Georg Lukacs. Theoretical texts are selected for each week and one student or faculty participants will make a presentation in which the connections between the theory and the research projects will be explored and discussed by the group.

This course applies current theories to the study of Arabic literary production. It focuses on forms of the ‘sacred’ and social critique that have developed over time and gathered momentum in the modern period. Although a number of Arab intellectual interventions are used to substantiate literary production, the primary concern of the discussion is narrative. A base for modern narrative was laid in the tenth century Maqamat of Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani that led in turn to the growth of this phenomenal achievement that set the stage for narratives of contestation, crisis, and critique.

The course will survey the development of Israeli Literature within three time sections and along the evolving process of its three main genres. The time sections are those a) the birth of Israeli literature in the aftermath of the 1948 War (the 1950s); b)the maturation of Israeli literature during the 1960s and 1970s; c) Israeli Literature in the era of the peace process and the Intifadas (1980s and 1990s). The genres are those of lyrical poetry, prose fiction (mainly novels), and drama. The course will also follow the crystallization of three sets of Israeli poetics: the conservative (realistic) one, the modernist, and the post-modernist ones. All texts will be available in English translations. Participation does not depend on former knowledge of Hebrew or Israeli literature.

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.

This doctoral seminar will address how the universalization of sexuality as an essential human (and sometime animal) attribute that transcends cultures began to be studied in U.S. academia in earnest in the 1970s, proceeding apace with the mobilization for sexual rights in U.S. domestic social activism, and by the 1980s with the mobilization of universal human rights as a central agenda for both U.S. foreign policy and international activism. With the era of globalization, these trends intensified with the aggressive proliferation of Western-funded non-governmental organizations in the Global North and South. The seminar will examine the literature on the universalization of sexual rights and identities by U.S. and European activists and scholars and the implication this has for sexual citizenship in the Global North and for sexuality studies itself in the Western Academy. Of particular interest to the seminar will be the resistance attributed by this literature to Islam, Muslims, and Arabs to assimilate into this new regime of universal sexuality, whether located in the Muslim or Arab worlds, or among Muslim populations in Europe and the United States and how the latter's presence in the heart of the Global North may influence sexual citizenship negatively.

An introduction to the language of classical and modern Arabic literature.

An introduction to the language of classical and modern Arabic literature.

Prerequisite: MDES W1210-W1211 or the equivalent. A continuation of the study of the language of contemporary writing.

Prerequisite: MDES W1210-W1211 or the equivalent. A continuation of the study of the language of contemporary writing.

Prerequisites: MDES W4212 Through reading a full novel, Rachid Daif's Dear Mr Kawabata,students will be able to increase their fluency and accuracy in Arabic while working on reading and being exposed to the main themes in modern Arabic literature, acquiring a sense of literary style as well as literary analytical terminology and concepts. The novel will be divided into twelve parts that the students will read in detail, writing critical pieces, engaging in discussion, and having assignments which will expand their vocabulary, manipulation of advanced grammar concepts, and employment of stylistic devices in their writing. The course works with all four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Arabic is the language of instruction.

Prerequisites: MDES W4212 Through reading excerpts from thirteen essential works, starting with Jabarti's history of the French Campaign in Egypt to a chapter from al-Qur'an, students will be able to increase their fluency and accuracy in Arabic while working on reading text and being exposed to the main themes in Classical Arabic literature, acquire a sense of literary style over a period of fourteen centuries as well as literary analytical terminology and concepts. The texts are selections from essential works that the students will read in detail, write critical pieces, engage in discussion and have assignments which will expand their vocabulary, manipulation of advanced grammar concepts, and employing stylistic devices in their writing. This course will enable students to start doing research in classical Arabic sources and complements MESAAS' graduate seminar Readings in Classical Arabic. The course works with all four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing). Arabic is the language of instruction.

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.

Prerequisites: Prerequisite: MDES W1511 or the equivalent. 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.

Prerequisites: MDES W4510 or MDES W1515 or the instructor's permission. Focus on transition from basic language towards authentic Hebrew, through reading of un-adapted literary and journalistic texts without vowels. Vocabulary building. Grammar is reviewed in context. A weekly hour is devoted to practice in conversation. Daily homework includes reading, short answers, short compositions, listening to web-casts, or giving short oral presentations via voice e-mail. Frequent vocabulary quizzes.

An introduction to the spoken and written language of contemporary Iran.

Prerequisite: MDES W1710-W1711 or the equivalent. A general review of the essentials of grammar; practice in spoken and written Persian; Arabic elements in Persian; selected readings emphasizing Iranian life and culture; materials from Tajikistan and Afghanistan, Indari.

Prerequisites: MDES W1310-W1311 or the equivalent. A continuation of the study of reading, writing and speaking of Armenian.

An introduction to classical Sanskrit. Grammar and reading of texts.

Reading and grammatical analysis of a literary text, chosen from the dramatic and narrative tradition.

Prerequisites: Two years of Sanskrit or instructor permission The two levels of advanced Sanskrit are typically given in alternate years. In 2011-12, kavya and alankarasastra will be offered; in 2013-14, mimamsa and nyaya. Additional courses, including Introduction to Panini and Introduction to the Literary Prakrits, are also available periodically. Final examinations will be required of all students in the first year of Advanced Sanskrit. In the second year, students are required to prepare a research project in lieu of the examination. This may be a research paper, a book or articles review, a bibliographical study, a translation, or whatever will advance the student’s research capabilities.

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.

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 Urdu. For example they should be able to converse on familiar topics such as their lives, their family, and their likes and dislikes. Because Urdu script is introduced in the Fall semester, so during the spring semester it’s a prerequisite that students should know the Urdu script and should be able to read and write simple Urdu sentences although they may not yet have these skills much developed. This course will focus on developing knowledge of the basic grammar of Urdu and vocabulary enrichment by exposing students to a variety of cultural and social topics related to aspects of daily life in both formal and informal registers. To achieve these goals, students will read Urdu texts from various genres, i.e. short stories, folktales, jokes, essays, poetry, and newspapers. Audio-video materials from films, songs, commercials, TV serials and TV news will also be used.

An introduction to the most widely spoken language of South Asia. Along with an understanding of the grammar, the course offers practice in listening and speaking. The Hindi (Devanagari) script is used for reading and writing.

Prerequisites: MDES W1610-W1611 or the instructor's permission. Continuing practice in listening, speaking, and grammatical understanding. Along with the Hindi (Devanagari) script, the Urdu (Perso-Arabic) script is taught in the class; both scripts are used for reading and writing.

Prerequisites: MDES W1613 or the instructor's permission. Conducted largely in Hindi. Includes reading and discussion of selected literary, social science, historical, and/or journalistic texts. Since the content changes each term, the course may be repeated for credit.

Prerequisites: MDES W1613 or the instructor's permission. Conducted largely in Urdu. Includes reading and discussion of selected literary, social science, historical, and/or journalistic texts. Since the content changes each term, the course may be repeated for credit.

Introduces students to the basic grammatical and syntactical skills required to function adequately in a Tamil-speaking environment. Of particular interest to students planning to conduct scholarly research or fieldwork in that region of the world. Introduces students to the rich culture of the Indian subcontinent where Tamil is spoken.

Prerequisites: TAML W1101-W1102 or the instructor's permission. Further develops students' written and oral proficiency in order to allow them to function adequately in a Tamil-speaking environment. Of particular interest to students planning to conduct scholarly research or fieldwork in a Tamil-speaking context. Develops the students' appreciation for the rich culture of the Indian subcontinent where Tamil is spoken.

Essentials of grammar, basic vocabulary, practice in speaking and reading Swahili the most widely used indigenous language of East Africa.

Prerequisites: SWHL 1101-1102 or instructor's permission A review of the essentials of Swahili grammar; detailed analysis of Swahili texts; practice in conversation.

Prerequisites: SWHL W1201-W1202 or intructor's permission. An introduction to the advanced syntactical, morphological, and grammatical structures of Swahili grammar; detailed analysis of Swahili texts; practice in conversation.

Introduction to the basic grammatical structures of Wolof, a major language of West Africa spoken in Senegal and Gambia.

Prerequisites: WLOF W1101-W1102 or the instructor's permission. Further develop a student's knowledge of Wolof, a major language of West Africa spoken primarily in Senegal and Gambia.

Introduces students to the basic structures of Zulu, a Bantu language spoken in South Africa, especially in the Zululand area of Kwa Zulu/Natal province.

Prerequisites: ZULU W1201-W1202 or the instructor's permission. Provides students with an in-depth review of the essentials of the Zulu grammar. Students are also able to practice their language skills in conversation.