Middle Eastern Language & Culture (MELC)

Introduction to Arabic Culture

An introduction to the seminar method of instruction that explores the major methodologies of the historical discipline and which accents the organization and expression of arguments suggested by readings in historical topics.

The Thousand and One Nights, also known as the Arabian Nights, is a collection of tales originated in the Arab lands that has become a masterpiece of world literature. These enchanting stories, framed by the tale of Scheherazade (or Shahrazad), have enjoyed a widespread and varied reputation over the centuries and across cultures. It is said that the Thousand and One Nights is the most read (or heard about) book in human history, second only to Bible. In this class, we will examine these stories from a variety of academic and cultural perspectives, taking advantage of the wealth of material available (both textual and audio-visual). We will examine issues of provenance: where did these stories originate and when? We will study the stories as literary texts as well as historical documents, asking what, if anything, they tell us about the cultures they reflect and the societies in which they are set. We will examine how these tales have been interpreted by later societies, both Arab and Western, and what those interpretations tell us about the interpreters. We will use this class and its content to introduce ourselves to the study of the Middle East, its languages, history, literature, and peoples. We will gain a better understanding of the analytical tools and techniques for the study and appreciation of literature in general.

The gateway course will provide students with initial preparation and acquaint them with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). More specifically, the course will introduce students to the historical milieu of MENA cultures and societies as well as the various dynamics that continue to shape them. It will survey the history of the region from the end of late antiquity to the present. Themes will include the rise of Islam; Muslim-Christian interactions; the caliphate; the age of gunpowder empires; engagements with modernity; encounters with European expansion; Islamic and secular reform movements; nationalism and revolution.

This course examines the history of the Middle East from the late eighteenth century to the Arab uprisings of 2011. We will approach cultural, social, political and intellectual transformations in the Middle East. We will pursue a number of themes including engagements with modernity; reactions to Western colonial expansion; religious and secular reform movements; nationalism and revolution; changes in gender and family experiences; the Arab-Israeli conflict; the impact of oil and the Cold War; postcolonial state-building; the rise of political Islam and piety movements; globalization and economic disparities; and movements for democracy and social justice.

This course is designed to introduce students to Islamic civilization and Muslim culture and societies. The course will cover the foundations of Islamic belief, worship, and institutions, along with the evolution of sacred law (al-shari`a) and theology, as well as various aspects of intellectual activities. The Koran and the life of the Prophet Muhammad will be examined in detail. Both Sunni and Shi`i perspectives will be considered. Major Sufi personalities will be discussed to illuminate the mystical, and popular, tradition in Islam. Topics on arts, architecture, literary culture, and sciences will be covered. Although the course is concerned more with the history of ideas than with modern Islam as such, it has great relevance for understanding contemporary Muslim attitudes and political, social, and cultural trends in the Muslim world today. MMME minors will need to secure an override from the Department office to register.

This course aims at introducing students to the history of the Arab world. Through a panoramic view encompassing twelve centuries of Arab history and culture, we look at all sides of this rich and venerable civilization: the beauty of the Alhambra and the great mosques, the importance attached to education, the achievements of Arab science—but also internal conflicts, widespread poverty, the role of women, and the contemporary Palestinian question. We explore how the religion of Islam created a far-flung Arab Muslim world that embraced lands reaching from the shores of the Atlantic to Iraq and the Indian Ocean. Each has its own geographical features and historical traditions, yet certain themes and experiences are common to all: the rise and spread of Islam, the growth of the Ottoman Empire, the expansion of European trade and empire, and in the last decades, the challenge of Islamic resurgence and integration into a new kind of world. We attempt at a clear and comprehensive interpretation of the paths of the Muslim religion, its divisions, its authorities and traditions, its current contradictory powers to unite and to divide. Throughout, social institutions and culture are intertwined with politics and economics. The texts we read in this class are studded with famous names from the past—Ibn Khaldun, al-Ghazali, and Ibn Sina (Avicenna); Saladin and ‘Abd al-Nasir (Nasser)—as well as with those of the recent memory—Hafiz al-Asad and Saddam Husayn; the Nobel Prize winner Najib Mahfuz, the cultural critic Edward Said and popular singer Umm Kulthum.

The course explores the history, culture, religion and society of Roman North Africa, one of the centers of early Latin Christianity. Important authors such as Cyprian, Tertullian, Lactantius, Perpetua, and above all Augustine of Hippo lived and wrote in the region dominated by the ancient Phoenician city of Carthage, and this is where some of the greatest writings of ancient Christianity were produced. In this course, we will situate the culturally and economically fertile environment of 3rd to 5th-century North Africa in its context in terms of geography (surrounded by the Mediterranean, the Sahara desert, the African provinces to the East, first and foremost Egypt, and lastly the Iberian Peninsula, from where the Vandal invaders would arrive), politics and history (from the Phoenician colonization to the arrival of the Arabs), economics, multiethnicity and religious diversity. We will discuss literary works, works of art, archaeological relics and historical sources to gain a multifaceted understanding of a complex and fascinating era whose legacy would contribute so much to shaping the Christian Middle Ages. Knowledge of Greek or Latin is not required. No prerequisites.

A survey of Islam and its history from the formative period to its manifestations in modern times, with a discussion of sectarian movements such as Kharijism, Shi'ism and Sunnism, various schools of thought in law, theology, philosophy and mysticism, as well as modern interpretations of Islam, especially with regard to political, social and gender issues.

The course will not assume prior knowledge of Islam, and offers students both an introduction to Islam and also the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between Islam and Christianity. It will cover the origins of Islam and the central religious ideas and practices of the Islamic tradition, especially as these bear on Islamic attitudes to Christianity. Central to the course will be a concern to compare and contrast Islamic and Christian doctrines and practices. The recent publication Muslims Ask, Christians Answer by Christian Troll SJ, a leading Catholic scholar of Islam, together with other works such as Kenneth Cragg's The Call of the Minaret, will be constant reference points that will enable students to explore Christian theological responses to the challenges posed by Islam to Christian doctrine. The differences between Christian (and especially Catholic) teaching and Muslim beliefs will be considered on a number of topics, including Prophecy, Scripture, Revelation, the nature of God, the human condition, prayer, faith and society. A mosque-visit and possibly other relevant local visits will be organized.

This interdisciplinary course offers a topical survey of the relationships between biological sex, culturally bound notions of "masculinity" and "femininity," and the gendered body in the Islamic tradition. The primary aim of the course is to explore the intersection of religion and social constructions of gender and the body in a variety of historical and cultural contexts in the Muslim World. Students read and interpret religious texts and commentaries, literary and legal texts, women's writings, and media in English translation. Coursework focuses on increasing students' understanding of the diversity of scholarly views on women's bodies as sites of piety and sites of political and social contestation (reproductive rights, public vs. private space, etc.).

This course introduces students to classical/medieval Arabic literature from its beginnings in the pre-Islamic period to the eve of the Ottoman Empire (600-1517). Its emphasis is on direct examination of Arabic literature through a close reading of the representative texts in English translation. Among the topics to be discussed: the impact of Islam on the Arabic literary tradition, the relationship between convention and invention, the emergence of lyric genres and the development of a concept of fiction. Readings include pre-Islamic Arabian poetry, the Qur'an (as literary text), lyric poetry and Sufi poetry, the Arabian Nights and medieval Arabic narrative romances. No knowledge of Arabic is required.

This course studies the major themes of Islamic theology. It starts from the early debates concerned with Muslim views of God, the nature of the Qur?an, the prophethood of Muhammad and ends with current debates about the status of Islamic law (shari?a). It also discusses divine vs. human will, the role of politics in Muslim view of salvation and the limits of rationality. It traces how these topics moved from simple formulae to complex concepts due to socio-political controversies and conditions, whether they were sectarian or interreligious conflicts, crises of legitimacy, colonialism or modernity. The arguments of various schools are presented, and translated excerpts from prominent theologians are studied. As we read these texts we ask ourselves a number of questions. For example, what alternatives were possible for theologians other than what later became standard Muslim doctrines? What is the importance of imagination in the creation of these theological systems? Did modern Muslim theologians have better options to handle ancient traditions that most of them ended up adopting? Do some modern Muslim theologians have an alternative view to offer? The course is meant to help students see the problems of theology from an Islamic viewpoint that may deepen their understanding of wider religious questions.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued a "Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions", which contains a statement that Muslims "submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God." While the Declaration can be understood as recognizing the possible validity of Islam's claim to Abrahamic status, some scholars have introduced the notion of "Abrahamic religions" as a way of associating Judaism, Christianity and Islam as related faiths. This course will explore the defining features of the Abrahamic religions that tie them closely together as well as their particularities and differences. As the youngest of the three Abrahamic religions, Islam has a lot of things to say about Abraham which largely correspond to the Biblical story although the Qur'an also contains some novel features, including the claim that Abraham, together with Ishmael, built the Ka‘bah. This course will discuss how the scriptures of the three religions emerged within the same cultural milieu, and explore their intertwined histories and the ways in which Jews, Christians, and Muslims developed their own independent religious identities from their early encounters to the present. Students will also be introduced to some basic teachings of Islam. No prior knowledge of Islam is required.

This course introduces to the devices used to regulate ethno-national conflicts by examining two of the most prominent examples: Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine. It provides students with an understanding of the tools available to groups, states, and policy makers to both wage and manage such conflict. Following a thorough introduction to the twin concepts of nationalism and ethnicity, the course analyses these divided societies in three main thematic blocks: partition, hegemonic control, and power-sharing /negotiated settlements. The goals of the course are to introduce students to the discipline's main themes, terms and theoretical debates, thereby providing thorough foundation knowledge, to introduce students to the respective history and main issues of the Northern Irish and Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to enhance students' understanding of the field by linking theory to detailed empirical case studies.

‘Islam and Violence’, ‘Islam and Conflict’, ‘Islam and Peace’, and ‘Islam and Justice’ are familiar topics that have become increasingly popular in the media in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. These topics were spawned by events such as the intractable Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the attacks on the United States of America in September 2001, the Bush administration’s subsequent ‘war on terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Arab Spring which began in North Africa in 2011, followed in 2014 by the grotesque violence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). In contradistinction, to the plethora of courses focusing on Islam and Terrorist Violence, this course seeks to critically examine the Islamic theologies of nonviolence and peacebuilding articulated and embodied by a number of Muslim scholars. In order to develop a complex set of insights into these and other current conflicts in which Muslims are implicated, it is important to have a greater understanding of the Islamic view of peace and justice. This course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of the Islamic view of justice and peacebuilding by examining the major theories and principles of Islamic ethics of Peacebuilding and applying it to analyze contemporary Muslim perspectives on justice and peacebuilding. Furthermore, this course is grounded in the nascent academic sub-discipline of religion, violence, and the practices of peace (RVP). The intention is to introduce students into this sub-discipline and help them expand their theoretical and analytical lenses. Finally, students are not expected to emerge from this course as experts on the Islamic Ethics of Peacebuilding, but will be exposed to major authors and arguments and be provided with a number of conceptual lenses that can be applied to their analysis of the diverse ways in which Islam is implicated in conflict, violence and peacebuilding on both a global and local level.

To belong to a religion often means more than just sharing in a common cosmology and belief in the supernatural, adhering to a set of collective rules for behavior and action, or participating in public rituals that performatively and symbolically carry out a particular way of life; it also means being part of a community—and, sometimes, even a culture. As the renowned French sociologist Émile Durkheim pointedly observed in his 1912 work The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: “A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community . . . all those who adhere to them.” While much theological and religious studies scholarship has focused on the beliefs, ethics, and performative practices (or rituals) within particular religious traditions, this course takes a broader view. Instead, it focuses on fundamental questions pertaining to the notions of belongingness within—and across—three of the world’s major religious traditions. Specifically, this course examines the notions of religious communality, and the subsequent ethical principles that stem from them, in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, approaching this topic from a reflexive Christian theological perspective centered on the following questions: What does it mean to be part of a religious community? What is the meaning of religious belonging in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam? How do these traditions’ notions of religious communality relate to their professed doctrines and subsequent ethical principles? And what might a comparative examination of these traditions’ various understandings of religious communality teach Christians about what belonging to the Church means today? Beginning with an overview of the terms “belongingness” and “Abrahamic religions,” the first part of this course situates the notion of religious communality within the theological sub-disciplines of comparative theology and religious ethics, introducing students to valuable theoretical tools upon which the remainder of the course is built. Next, the second part of this course systematically compares various historical and contemporary notions of religious belongingness within the Christian Church to Jewish and Muslim notions of the Synagogue and Ummah, exploring how these traditions’ respective understandings of belongingness relate to their derived ethical notions of what religious communality morally entails. Finally, the third part of this course examines the ongoing phenomena of religious belongingness within shared, pluralistic contexts and asks: What might a Christian comparative theological approach to the ethics of religious communality look like in our day and age? And what might such an ethics entail for how Christians imagine the Church in itself and in relation to other forms of religious communality?

Individual or small group study under the direction of a faculty member. Permission of the Department required.

A research course for the capstone essay for the minor in Mediterranean/Middle East Studies. May not be double-counted for thesis credit in a major.