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.190.394 (01) | Comparative Politics of the Middle East and North Africa | TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM | Parkinson, Sarah | Krieger 300 | Spring 2024 | This course examines the domestic, regional, and transnational politics of the Middle East and North Africa. The class is organized into three units. The first examines major armed conflicts— anti-colonial, intra-state, and inter-state—from 1948 through the 1990s. It uses these historical moments as windows onto key issues in Middle Eastern and North African political issues such as external intervention/occupation, human rights, sectarianism, social movements, and memory politics. Unit Two focuses on policy relevant issues such as democratization, minority populations, religion and politics, and gender. In Unit Three, students will explore the politics of the Arab Uprisings through critical reading and discussion of new (post-2011) scholarship on MENA states, organizations, and populations. Enrollment limited to Political Science and International Studies majors. |
| AS.194.220 (01) | The Qur'an: Text and Context | TTh 10:30AM - 11:45AM | Ziad, Homayra | 3003 N. Charles OMA Lounge | Spring 2024 | For 1400 years, the Qur’an has played a central role in Muslim intellectual, spiritual, artistic and ritual life. This course will explore the sacred scripture of Islam through its foundational ideas, history of the text and thematic development, literary style, history and methods of interpretation, and role in Muslim spiritual and ritual life. We will also explore how the Qur’an weaves through literature, music and the visual arts. |
| AS.194.256 (01) | Museums, Communities, and the Sacred | TTh 1:30PM - 2:45PM | Ziad, Homayra | 3003 N. Charles OMA Lounge | Spring 2024 | This community-engaged course is co-created by a scholar and curator with expertise in religion, art, and material culture, and taught in partnership with the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), and centers how museums engage with the sacred. Recognizing that museums have traditionally been under-equipped to respond to the social concerns that animate their local communities, the BMA is rethinking how a twenty-first century civic museum engages the city in which it is located. Understanding the museum as a public space in which contemporary civic and social issues can be engaged, we will explore such questions as: how can a museum represent devotional objects while honoring a diversity of religious and spiritual perspectives and avoiding homogenous narratives about belief? How can a museum create relationships with religious communities to understand and interpret the objects in its collection, and navigate differences in faith-based communities with ethical care? How can a museum engage local communities in the process of writing labels for objects and in other acts of interpretation in a way that is not extractive and is genuinely value-aligned? In short, how can a museum truly become public? As a community-engaged course, students will build practically on their learning about museums, religion and public pedagogy to create and facilitate community listening circles at the BMA. The course will include visits to the BMA and other sites, guest visits on focused topics from museum professionals in other institutions, and training in listening and facilitation. |
| AS.310.331 (01) | Islam in Asia | TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM | Henning, Stefan | Mergenthaler 266 | Spring 2024 | 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, Pakistan, India, China, Malaysia, and Indonesia. |
| AS.375.116 (01) | First Year Arabic II | MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM, TTh 9:00AM - 9:50AM | Jafire, Sana | Maryland 217 | Spring 2024 | 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 | Maryland 217 | Spring 2024 | 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. |
| 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. |