AALL: Arabic Courses: Literature Courses

The impact of 9/11 on Arab culture. Considers post-1990 films and fiction by Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese, Saudi Arabians, Tunisians, and Egyptians. The collapse of socialism in 1989 and the Gulf War as a turning point in the Arab world. Intensified awareness of the role of the United States in the region as a result of 9/11, of religion as a politically effective force, and of the Muslim difference in the homogenized consumerist global system. Response to these challenges in novels, films, and popular culture that draw on folktales, Sufism, magical realism and the poetry of T.S. Eliot.

AALL 173S Women in in Arab Literature

The course 'Women in Arab culture' will focus on representation of women in writing and cinema. A number of writings and films by women and men including Hanan al-Sheikh, Nawal al-Sa'dawi, Ahlam Mustaghanmi, Assia Djebar , Merzaq Allouache, Mohammad Zran are selected to draw a comparison between how women represent themselves and how they are represented by the patriarchy.

AALL 178 Local Islam
Professor Ellen McLarney

Local Islams introduces Islamic groups in North Carolina their diverse spaces, practices, and ethnicities. Includes a substantial fieldwork component, where students do research in the community. Examines how religion shapes the identities of immigrant groups, but also breaks down ethnic barriers and distinctions of class, race, and nationality. Gender roles in conflict with dominant cultural mores will also be a focus.

AALL 195 Special Topics - Islam and Feminism: Inside and Out

The course examines feminism’s relationship to Islam from two vantage points? from within and from without. We begin by exploring European, colonial interpretations of Muslim women, their “nature,” status, and roles, with a focus on how political circumstances affect (and dictate) cultural representations. The course then explores how ideas about the liberation of women became entwined with nationalist and independence movements in Egypt and Algeria. How was this liberatory project wrested from the West? Did it truly become indigenous and “authentic”? We then examine how the Islamic movement, specifically in Egypt, grew out of and in response to these nationalist movements. Women, their rights, roles, and identity became a crucial part of Islamic reform, defined both within and against the post-colonial ruling regimes. The course focuses on three main dimensions of feminist consciousness in Islam: theoretical, political, and practical. We do this by looking at three different instances: the reinterpretations of scripture with a consciousness of gender issues, women’s participation in the Iranian revolution, and the return to veiling in Egypt. The course examines Islam’s relationship to feminism with the aim of investigating how an awareness of gender equality, women’s rights, and calls for emancipation have been incorporated into Islamic religious discourses.

AALL 252 Muslim Networks in the Information Age: Gender, Jihad and Diasporas
miriam cooke and Bruce Lawrence

This course, the first in a three-year series to be taught in coordination with faculty from UNC, will examine the formation and function of networks in the Islamic world and beyond. Networks have become the emblem of the Information Age, yet they are not new. Using the internet as an index of technological change and social opportunity, we shall discuss how Muslim women and men have traditionally forged transnational links, e.g., the religious underground, the Hajj, trade partnerships, at the same time that we explore how these networks are adapting to the Information Age, e.g., associations of Islamic feminists. The major foci of the course will be 1) gender, and the impact of the changing roles of women on Muslim identity in general and on traditional notions of honor and sexuality; why is it that, paradoxically, despite the wide diversity of the Muslim world "the cultural articulation of patriarchy is increasingly justified by reference to Islam and Islamic doctrine" (Farida Shaheed)?; 2) "jihad" as identity struggle within contexts of rapid transformation; and 3) diasporas, both metaphorical and real, as created by massive migration. Integral to the course is the participation of national and international lecturers. This course is open to seniors and graduate students from both universities.