Autumn

This sequence emphasizes all skills of language acquisition (reading, writing, listening, speaking). The goal is to enable the student towards the end of the sequence to read, understand, and translate simple texts in modern standard Persian and engage in short everyday dialogs. All the basic grammatical structures are covered.

This course is designed to acquaint the student with the basic problems and concepts as well as the sources and methodology for the study of the premodern history of the Islamic world. Sources will be read in translation and discuss in class. The concepts and tools acquired will be applied to specific research projects to be submitted as term papers.

This course delves into debates in Arabic linguistics of the classical period (before the fifteenth century) on questions such as, What is the origin of language? How does language work? How do languages relate to one another? Where does the Arabic language come from? Is the distinction between literal and figurative uses of language real? We read writings by seminal Arabic linguists, such as al-Tabari, Abu Hilal al-‘Askari, Ibn Faris, al-Qadi ‘Abd al-Jabbar, and Ibn Taymiyya, addressing not only linguistics proper but also topics in fields such as Quranic exegesis, theology, and legal theory. We also discuss key works of secondary scholarship on the subject. Undergraduate students by instructor permission only.

This course will provide a historical and theoretical survey of issues pertaining to gender and sexuality in the modern Middle East. First, we will outline the colonial legacies of gender politics and gendered discourses in modern Middle Eastern history. We will discuss orientalist constructions of the harem and the veil (Allouche, Laila Ahmed, Lila Abu-Loghod), and their contested afterlives across the Middle East. We will also explore colonial (homo)sexuality, and attendant critiques (Najmabadi, Massad). We will pay especial attention to local discourses about gender and sexuality, and trouble facile assumptions of “writing back” while attending to the various specificities of local discourses of everyday life across various sites of the Middle East. Eschewing reductive traps for more nuanced explorations of the specifics of life in Beirut, Cairo, Istanbul, or Tehran – as well as to rural areas – we will show how gender and sexuality
are constructed and practiced in these locales. In addition to foundational scholarly texts in the field, we will also engage with an array of cultural texts (films, novels, poetry, comics) and – where possible – have conversations with activists who are working in these sites via Skype/teleconferencing.

This course gives an overview of the richness of Mesopotamian Literature (modern Iraq) written in the 3rd-1st millennium BC. We will read myths and epics written on clay tablets in the Sumerian and Akkadian language in English translation and discuss content and style, but also the religious, cultural and historic implications. Particular focus will be on the development of stories over time, the historical context of the literature and mythological figures. The texts treated cover not only the famous Epic of Gilgamesh, but also various legends of Sumerian and Akkadian kings, stories about Creation and World Order, and destruction. The topics covered range from the quest for immortality, epic heroes and monsters, sexuality and love.

This course provides a survey of the primary literatures of Islamic law and their treatment in modern scholarship. Primary texts read and discussed in class cover the following genres: compendium (mukhtasar), commentary (sharh), legal disputation (jadal), legal theory (usul al-fiqh), legal maxims (qawa’id fiqhiyya), handbooks for judges (adab al-qadi), handbooks for muftis (adab al-mufti), and legal responsa (fatawa). We will read closely selected excerpts from each of these genres and discuss relevant secondary literature in order to contextualize the primary texts thematically and historically and to examine critically the research questions that have thus far animated the modern study of Islamic law. Undergraduate students by instructor permission only.

This graduate seminar offers a historiographical overview of the approaches to sect, religion, minority and gender in colonial and postcolonial contexts in the Middle East. We will discuss the conceptualizations of nationalism by different social scientists; explore the characteristics of Iranian, Turkish and Arab nationalism[s] in the years 1860-1979; examine the history of science and technology in the region and its influence on perceptions of Islamic modernity,; and ask whether sectarianism an old phenomenon or a new one, paying heed to the relationship between minorities and religions in the region.

This two-quarter seminar focuses on the transformation of the Muslim Ottoman principality into an imperial entity--after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453--that laid claim to inheritance of Alexandrine, Roman/Byzantine, Mongol/Chinggisid, and Islamic models of Old World Empire at the dawn of the early modern era. Special attention is paid to the transformation of Ottoman imperialism in the reign of Sultan Süleyman the Lawgiver (1520-1566), who appeared to give the Empire its “classical” form. Topics include: the Mongol legacy; the reformulation of the relationship between political and religious institutions; mysticism and the creation of divine kingship; Muslim-Christian competition (with special reference to Spain and Italy) and the formation of early modernity; the articulation of bureaucratized hierarchy; and comparison of Muslim Ottoman, Iranian Safavid, and Christian European imperialisms. The first quarter comprises a chronological overview of major themes in Ottoman history, 1300-1600; the second quarter is divided between the examination of particular themes in comparative perspective (for example, the dissolution and recreation of religious institutions in Islamdom and Christendom) and student presentations of research for the seminar paper. In addition to seminar papers, students will be required to give an oral presentation on a designated primary or secondary source in the course of the seminar.

The course reviews the issues and scholarship on various facets of the social history of the Islamic Near East, ca. 700-1500 CE), including Patterns of Social Organization (“class,” tribal or kinship ties, professional ties, ethnicity, etc.), the role of pastoral nomadism in Near Eastern societies, non-Muslim communities and their relations with Muslims, Women and Gender issues, Technology and Social Change, Historical Demography, and Urbanism.

This is a required introductory course for all CMES ancient-track students.