The courses listed below are provided by the JHU Public Course Search. This listing provides a snapshot of immediately available courses and may not be complete.
Course registration information can be found on the Student Information Services (SIS) website.
Note that courses other than those listed below may be approved by the Islamic Studies DUS for credit toward the minor in Islamic Studies.
Arabic courses are offered by the Center for Language Education.
| Course # (Section) | Title | Day/Times | Instructor | Location | Term | Course Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AS.010.426 (01) | Sacred Connections: The Arts of Pilgrimage in the Islamic World, c. 1500–1900 | Th 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Rustem, Unver | BLC 2043 | Fall 2024 | As a central practice of the Muslim faith, pilgrimage has long animated the arts of the Islamic world, not only by generating countless monuments and objects, but also by facilitating the movement of artists, artifacts, and ideas across vast distances. This course explores the rich visual and material products of the Islamic pilgrimage tradition during the early modern and modern periods, including the architecture of the sacred sites themselves, the processions and ceremonies enacted by those who journeyed to these destinations, and proxy monuments and artworks created for those unable to perform the pilgrimage in person. Although our focus will be on the Hajj—the main annual pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest city, Mecca—we will also consider the arts associated with other pilgrimage sites, in particular the Shi‘i shrines of Iraq and Iran, as well as the pilgrimage practices of non-Muslim communities in the Middle East. We will bridge the gap between these geographies and our own vantage point in Baltimore through locally housed artworks, among them a seventeenth-century Ottoman tile at the Walters Art Museum that shows the Great Mosque of Mecca and a printed Hajj certificate—probably designed by an Indian artist but published in Istanbul in 1895—recently acquired for Hopkins’ own Special Collections. Through close engagement with these objects and other materials, the course will address such themes as sacred spectacle and ritual, pilgrimage as a locus of female patronage, and the impact of modernity on the Hajj and its traditions. |
| AS.100.327 (01) | The Islamic Age of Empires: The Ottomans, the Mughals, and the Safavids | MW 12:00PM - 1:15PM | Noor, Rao Mohsin Ali | Croft Hall G02 | Fall 2024 | In this course, we will survey the political, social, intellectual, and cultural history of the three Islamic early modern gunpowder empires that ranged from “the Balkans to Bengal”: The Ottomans (1300-1922), the Safavids (1501-1736), and the Mughals (1526-1858). |
| AS.375.115 (01) | First Year Arabic | MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM, TTh 9:00AM - 9:50AM | Jafire, Sana | Maryland 202 | Fall 2024 | Introductory course in speaking, listening, reading, and writing Modern Standard Arabic. Presents basic grammatical structures and a basic vocabulary. Through oral-aural drill in classroom, tapes in Language Laboratory, and reading/writing exercises, students attain a basic level of competence on which they can build in subsequent years of study. No Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory |
| AS.375.215 (01) | Second Year Arabic | MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, TTh 10:30AM - 11:20AM | Jafire, Sana | Maryland 202 | Fall 2024 | Designed to bring students up to competency level required for third/fourth year Arabic. Students will consolidate and expand their mastery of the four basic skills acquired in AS.375.115-116. More authentic material--written, audio, and visual--will be used, and culture will be further expanded on as a fifth skill. Recommended Course Background: AS.375.115-116 or equivalent. |
| AS.375.301 (01) | Third Year Arabic | MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM | Jafire, Sana | Krieger 504 | Fall 2024 | Designed to enhance students' ability to read, discuss, and write about various topics covered in traditional and contemporary Arabic texts. Recommended Course Background: AS.375.216 or equivalent. |
| AS.010.359 (01) | The Symbolic Mosque: A Political History of Islamic Architecture | MW 4:30PM - 5:45PM | Kim, Christine | Gilman 177 | Spring 2025 | From the 2008 Swiss referendum banning minarets and the opposition of the 2010 proposed construction of a mosque near the site of the September 11 attacks in New York City to the more recent reconversion of the Hagia Sophia in 2020, the mosque in modern times has incited significant controversy and sentiments of hostility among various political and religious groups. The mosque as a political battleground, however, has a much longer history, and the coopting of religious buildings and architectural elements as visual symbols deserves a more comprehensive historical analysis. With a focus on the Ottoman context, this seminar will explore the political dimensions of mosque architecture since the fifteenth century and will examine its transformations both visually and symbolically across spatiotemporal contexts. The historical investigation into the symbolic significance of the mosque and Islamic architecture in the first half of this course will lead to a broader discussion in the second half about the role of architectures of nationalism in politics and diplomacy starting from the nineteenth century until today. By focusing on the mosque itself as a symbol, this course aims to spark dialogue and reflection on the role of religious monuments in contemporary political encounters across different geographic contexts. This course encourages a multi- and inter-disciplinary approach to Islamic art and architecture by incorporating readings and topics from a variety of fields, such as cultural theory, political history, anthropology, and heritage studies. Case studies covered by this course include the Persianate and Byzantine influences in early Ottoman mosques, the establishment and continuation of the classical Ottoman architectural style of the sixteenth century, neo-Mamluk mosques in Egypt and the creation of architectural identities in Ottoman Arab lands, architectural afterlives of Ottoman heritage in modern Greece, and the use of neo-Ottoman architecture by |
| AS.010.377 (01) | Modern Palestinian Art & Its Contexts | MW 3:00PM - 4:15PM | Amin, Alessandra | Gilman 177 | Spring 2025 | Modern Palestinian art took shape in the bourgeois salons of nineteenth-century Cairo, the Ottoman-era workshops of Jerusalem’s icon painters, the militant presses of revolutionary Beirut, and the sewing circles of Amman’s refugee camps. It emerged from the state-sponsored art schools of the Communist Bloc, in conversation with the Black Panther Party, through crowds of curious exhibition-goers in Tokyo and Oslo and Tehran and, of course, in defiance of the ongoing Israeli occupation. This class introduces students to art made in and around Palestine between 1880 and today, focusing on its engagement with the myriad worlds in which it has always participated. How can visual culture mediate relationships to local heritage across space and time, or negotiate nationalism in the absence of a nation? What tensions arise around the circulation of artwork inexorably linked to a liberation struggle? How have artists navigated questions of the “postcolonial” as the subjects of a contemporary colonial regime? This class will explore modern Palestinian visual art from a transnational perspective, paying particular attention to the roles of women and gender in its creation, content, and display. |
| AS.070.267 (01) | Culture, Religion and Politics in Iran | W 1:30PM - 4:00PM | Haeri, Niloofar | Mergenthaler 426 | Spring 2025 | This is an introductory course for those interseted in gaining basic knowledge about contemporary Iran. The focus will be on culture and religion and the ways they in which they become interwoven into different kinds of political stakes. |
| AS.310.331 (01) | Islam in Asia | TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM | Henning, Stefan | Mergenthaler 266 | Spring 2025 | You will learn about the efforts of ordinary, non-elite Muslims to shape the relation between their communities and the state as well as to (where applicable) the non-Muslim majority through collective organizing over the last forty years. We will read and discuss books by anthropologists, historians, and sociologists studying Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. |
| AS.375.116 (01) | First Year Arabic II | MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM, TTh 9:00AM - 9:50AM | Jafire, Sana | Krieger Laverty | Spring 2025 | Continuation of AS.375.115. Introductory course in speaking, listening, reading, and writing Modern Standard Arabic. Presents basic grammatical structures and a basic vocabulary. Through oral-aural drill in classroom, tapes in Language Laboratory, and reading/writing exercises, students attain a basic level of competence on which they can build in subsequent years of study. May not be taken Satisfactory/ Unsatisfactory |
| AS.375.216 (01) | Second Year Arabic II | MW 10:00AM - 10:50AM, TTh 10:30AM - 11:20AM | Jafire, Sana | Krieger 302 | Spring 2025 | Continuation of AS.375.215. Designed to bring students up to competency level required for third/fourth year Arabic. Students will consolidate and expand their mastery of the four basic skills acquired in AS.375.115-116. More authentic material--written, audio, and visual--will be used, and culture will be further expanded on as a fifth skill. Recommended Course Background: AS.375.215 or permission required. |