ARABIC 260L: Imagining the Modern Middle East

This course constitutes an interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary novels, picture books, graphic novels, and films that represent Middle Eastern people(s) and settings. It investigates identify formation and cultural construction, as well as politics and ideology in literature. The course examines how texts construct and perpetuate on often problematic version of cultural identify. Students will explore how unique histories, traditions, and politics are significant factors in reading and analyzing literature and will investigate how literature addressed to the western reader often perpetuates a stereotypical version of the Middle East that homogenizes its populations and fails to account for its complexity. The course can cover a variety of topics and genres including adolescent literature, comic books, the graphic novel, and contemporary fiction about the Middle East. Possible themes for the course include political socialization, religious ideology, indoctrination and dissidence across a range of literary and cultural texts. Taught in English.