Courses
To see a complete list of courses offered and their descriptions, visit the online course catalog. Students can register for courses 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.
- AS.375.115 - First Year Arabic
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
Credits: 4.50
Instructor: Jafire, Sana
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MWF 10:00AM - 10:50AM, TTh 12:00PM - 12:50PM
Status: Open - AS.194.101 - Introduction to Islam
Study of Islam, its beliefs and practices in their historical development, from the preaching of Muhammad to the end of the Middle Ages, providing a historically-grounded understanding of Islam
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ferrario, Gabriele
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MWF 1:30PM - 2:20PM
Status: Open - AS.140.461 - Scripta Manent: Manuscript Cultures East and West
This seminar looks at manuscripts both as physical objects and as cultural products, through an analysis of their ways of production, material features, and uses in different cultures and contexts. Meetings will be devoted to the codicology, paleography, and philology of manuscripts with a particular focus on the Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic traditions. Indian, Chinese and Japanese contexts will complement the focus of the seminar and provide elements of comparison and wider framing. The seminar will also address recently developed digital tools for the study of manuscripts and provide students with a set of skills and tools for approaching and using manuscript material effectively. The seminar will include hands-on sessions, with viewing of original manuscripts from the rich collections of the Sheridan Libraries and the Walters Art Museum.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ferrario, Gabriele
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: M 3:00PM - 5:20PM
Status: Open - AS.375.115 - First Year Arabic
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
Credits: 4.50
Instructor: Jafire, Sana
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MWF 9:00AM - 9:50AM, TTh 10:30AM - 11:20AM
Status: Open - AS.194.205 - Introduction to Islamic Spirituality: The Sufi tradition
For over a thousand years, the Sufi tradition has been a dynamic force in Islamic social, political and spiritual life. The tradition offers a treasure trove of devotional literature and music, philosophical treatises, contemplative practices, and institutions of social and political organization. Often known by its key practices, (“cleansing the heart” and “purifying the ego-self”), the goal of Islamic spirituality is ihsan: manifesting divine beauty through a path of self-knowledge. Historically, the tradition provided moral and spiritual direction through the presence of spiritual teachers and supported infrastructure that could be likened to privatized social welfare (serving the impoverished, sick, and homeless). After unpacking the politics of the term “Sufi,” we will explore foundational concepts in the Qur’an, in the literature on Muhammad, and in ancient Greek traditions of virtue ethics. We will trace the historical development of the tradition from the early ascetics to the age of trans-national Sufi orders. We will then move into some of the key constructs of the tradition of spiritual growth and character formation: the divine-human relationship, the anthropology and stages of the spiritual path, contemplative and practical disciplines, ideas of sainthood, discipleship and ethical perfection, and the psychology of love. Throughout the class, we will explore the nature of experiential language and interrogate the tradition through the lens of gender. We will also experience Sufism through ritual and music and explore the tradition in some of its uniquely American forms.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ziad, Homayra
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: TTh 9:00AM - 10:15AM
Status: Open - AS.070.372 - Religion and Media
This course examines the ways in which conventional and non-conventional media recreate or transform religious experience in modern life. Increasingly, religion is experienced not only in sacred spaces and as ritual prescriptions, but also through the information that is disseminated through radio, TV, and the Internet, as well as in consumer culture and political speeches. Beginning with this proposition that our ideas about religion are shaped not only by historical and scriptural legacies, but as well as by material practices and other sundry conditions of mediation, of which our present times supply many, we will reexamines how questions of revelation, belief, spirituality, ethereality, and ritual practice are constituted by these irreducible ways, thus complicating the neat separation of religion and secularism, or, for that matter, religion and culture.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Bagaria, Swayam
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
Status: Open - AS.070.267 - Culture, Religion and Politics in Iran
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.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Haeri, Niloofar
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 1:30PM - 3:50PM
Status: Waitlist Only - AS.191.335 - Arab-Israeli Conflict (IR)
The course will focus on the origin and development of the Arab-Israeli conflict from its beginnings when Palestine was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, through World War I, The British Mandate over Palestine, and the first Arab-Israeli war (1947-1949). It will then examine the period of the Arab-Israeli wars of 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982, the Palestinian Intifadas (1987-1993 and 2000-2005); and the development of the Arab-Israeli peace process from its beginnings with the Egyptian-Israeli treaty of 1979, the Oslo I and Oslo II agreements of 1993 and 1995, Israel's peace treaty with Jordan of 1994, the Road Map of 2003; and the periodic peace talks between Israel and Syria. The conflict will be analyzed against the background of great power intervention in the Middle East, the rise of political Islam and the dynamics of Intra-Arab politics, and will consider the impact of the Arab Spring.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Freedman, Robert
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: T 4:00PM - 6:30PM
Status: Open - AS.363.329 - Gender and Sexuality Beyond the Global West: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Art in North Africa and the Middle East
This course aims to explore how gender and sexuality is situated in contemporary artistic practices in the geographical Middle East, through concepts of religion, war, revolution, resistance, nation-state, post-colonialism, and neoliberalism, especially as written and observed first-hand by artists, curators and scholars from the Middle East and North Africa region and their diasporas. Every week, under an overarching topic, notions of gender and sexuality will be questioned through works of selected artists across the region, as well as texts that provide the historical, theoretical, sociological and political background.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Ince, Ezgi
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: W 2:00PM - 4:30PM
Status: Open - AS.375.215 - Second Year Arabic
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.
Credits: 4.00
Instructor: Jendi, Sahar
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MW 12:00PM - 12:50PM, TTh 10:30AM - 11:20AM
Status: Open - AS.375.301 - Third Year Arabic
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.
Credits: 3.00
Instructor: Jafire, Sana
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MWF 11:00AM - 11:50AM
Status: Open - AS.375.215 - Second Year Arabic
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.
Credits: 4.00
Instructor: Jendi, Sahar
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: MW 9:00AM - 9:50AM, TTh 9:00AM - 9:50AM
Status: Open - AS.375.401 - Fourth Year Arabic
This is an introductory course to different periods of the Arabic literature. Selections of famous Arabic poetry and short prose works are the substance of the course.
Credits: 2.00
Instructor: Jendi, Sahar
Term: Fall 2018
Meetings: TTh 1:00PM - 1:50PM
Status: Open