Featured Elective Courses

This seminar introduces students to the essential texts of a classical education in the Arabic-Islamic world. What works of poetry, literary criticism, belletristic prose, biography, geography, history, and other disciplines were considered staples of a well-rounded education in medieval Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, or Fez? Emphasis will be placed on close and patient readings of primary sources. At least three years of Arabic required.

Global Palestine: Palestine is often imagined as being locked into a national conflict with Israel over a territory slightly larger than the state of Vermont. This class seeks to break out of this framework, considering Palestine within larger—global, even—structures and processes of colonialism and decolonization; forced displacement and securitization; and shifting modes of temporality and spatialization. The goal is not only to provide useful and nuanced approaches to Palestinian history, but to use the histories of Palestine and Palestinians to examine more closely the workings and effects of global dynamics.

DIAP

The emergence in the 1990s of Iranian cinema onto the world stage caught many by surprise. This cinema has, however, had a long and illustrious history. While attempting to provide an historical survey of these films, we will focus primarily on those produced in the last two decades. We will pay close attention to cinematic form but will also examine the ways the films intersect with cultural-political events, including the Revolution and the subsequent Islamicization of the culture, the institutionalization of the “modesty system,” and the alteration of divorce laws.

WRIT

What was religion like for women in the ancient Mediterranean world? What experiences, emotions, and constraints characterized women’s religious lives? What was public and what was private? What were the family issues involved? How were religions gendered? Were there major differences between religions that included goddesses and priestesses, and those that did not? Were notions of gender fixed or fluid? Could they enable religious freedoms for women? We will explore these and other questions through a consideration of religions Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian between roughly 500 BCE and 500 CE, with a focus on the Roman Empire.

FYS | WRIT