2022-3 Courses

FALL QUARTER

Graduate Level:

History C201K: Topics in History: India: Issues and Debates in South Asian Historiography
Instructor: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Description: Selective (not comprehensive) introduction into some key debates that have marked South Asian historiography over past decades. Field itself is already vast and still growing, even if it tends to develop in fits and starts; and is today extremely uneven in both quality and coverage. However, intention is to offer some perspective–not merely on varied positions and ideologies, but also on methods and techniques used. Journal articles given particular importance over monographs and other forms of essays, though these too are drawn upon. Includes student oral presentations. Students also complete historiographical paper.

History C201K: Topics in History: India: History of Modern Afghanistan: Islam, Modernism, and Transnationalism
Instructor: Nile Green
Description: Designed for students with no previous knowledge of Afghanistan. Examination of key moments in modern Afghan history from around 1880 to 1980. Focus on tensions between attempts to create stable Afghan nation-state and factors that destabilized nation-building project. While paying due attention to political and institutional developments, special attention given to religious, literary, and cultural factors during period that saw Afghanistan transformed from one of most remote regions in world to country with remarkably broad transnational connections. Survey of century that saw Afghans become increasingly integrated into global affairs. Special attention paid to interactions with wider world that culminated in Afghan communist coup and Soviet invasion of 1979. Study involves weekly readings, in-class discussions, and preparation of research paper on based primary source(s).

Iranian 220A: Classical Persian Texts
Instructor: Domenico Ingenito
Description: Lecture, three hours. Requisites: courses 103A, 103B, 103C. Study of selected classical Persian texts. May be taken independently for credit.

Islamic Studies 291A – Variable Topics (Islamic State in Islamic Legal History)
Instructor: Luke Yarbrough
Description: Roles of rulers and states in legal systems in the early and middle Islamic periods. I.e. “Islamic law” not in the sense of fiqh alone, but in that of laws made and enforced by Muslim rulers and their appointees: sometimes ʿulamāʾ, sometimes not. One focus will be on reading state decrees (manshūr, tawqīʿ, raqam, etc.) in context, potentially from areas of student interest.

Upper Division:

Arabic M110 / Comp Lit M110: A Thousand and One Nights/ Alf Layla wa Layla
Instructor: Susan Slyomovics
Description: Since its appearance in Europe in 1704, A Thousand and One Nights is the best-known work of Arabic literature in the west. This course examines the cycle of tales more commonly known as The Arabian Nights and includes the history of its translation, contemporary oral performances of the tales in the Arabic-speaking world, the literary emergence of the vernacular language in relation to Classical Arabic, and Western appropriations of the tales in music, film and the novel (Ravel, Rimsky-Korsakov, Barth, Poe, and Walt Disney). Knowledge of Arabic is not required.

Arabic 130: Classical Arabic Texts
Instructor: Michael Cooperson
Description: An introduction to pre-modern Arabic books, intended for students familiar with modern Arabic. Covers how pre-modern texts are organized and what information they contain; how modern editions are put together; how to find editions and how to use the apparatus (notes, indexes, etc.) they contain; how to use dictionaries, grammars, and other reference works; how to deal with transliteration and calendars; and the major differences between modern and pre-modern Arabic.

Iranian 103A: Advanced Persian: Introduction to Classical Persian Poetry
Instructor: Domenico Ingenito
Description: Lecture, three hours. Requisite: course 102C. Students who do exceptionally well in course 20C may be permitted to enroll with consent of instructor. May be taken independently for credit.

Lower Division:

History 9A: Introduction to Asian Civilizations: History of India
Instructor: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, two hours. Introductory survey for beginning students of major cultural, social, and political ideas, traditions, and institutions of Indic civilization.

History 9D: History of the Middle East
Instructor: James Gelvin
Description: Lower division survey of Middle Eastern history from 632-Present, with a special emphasis on the past 300 years.

Iranian 55: Gender and Sexuality in Arts and Literatures of Iran and Middle East
Instructor: Domenico Ingenito
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Multifaceted introduction to Persian poetry, recognized as jewel of Persian culture, and to pictorial, architectural, performative, cinematographic, and photographic dimensions of artistic milieu spanning between Balkans, India, and Central Asia from 10th century CE to present. With consideration of centrality of discourses on identity, desire, and spirituality to core of Persian aesthetics, study of broad variety of socioanthropological, ethical, and historiographical issues stemming from both mainstream topics characterizing extensive field of Iranian studies and most controversial conversations on nature of sexuality, ethnicity, and religion.

WINTER QUARTER

Graduate Level:

Anthropology M247Q: Central Asian Studies: Discipline, Methods, Debates
Instructor: Domenico Ingenito
Description: (Same as History M287 and Near Eastern Languages M287.) Seminar, two hours. Introduction to study of central Asia as practiced in humanities and social sciences disciplines.

History 201J: Topics in Middle Eastern History:
Instructor: James Gelvin
Description: Graduate seminar; topic TBD.

History C201K: Topics in History: India
Instructor: Nile Green
Description: Designed for graduate students. Reading and discussion of selected topics. May be repeated for credit. Concurrently scheduled with course C191N.

History 201W: Topics in History: World
Instructor: Sanjay Subrahmanyam
Description: Seminar, three hours. Designed for graduate students. Reading and discussion of selected topics. May be repeated for credit. May be concurrently scheduled with course C191O.

Upper Division:

Arabic 142: Arabic Media
Instructor: Michael Cooperson
Description: Development of facility with language of Arabic press and broadcasting. Activities include monitoring current materials via Internet; transcribing, translating, and summarizing; writing original reports in Arabic; and oral presentations and discussions.

Arabic 150: Classical Arabic Literature in English
Instructor: Michael Cooperson
Description: Readings in English; knowledge of Arabic not required. Survey of premodern Arabic cultural production in its political, religious, and social contexts. Coverage of pre-Islamic Arabia, rise of Islam, and major themes of Southwest Asian history, along with significant figures and moments in literature and culture of premodern period. Consideration of selected modern responses to Arabic tradition

History M174E: Indo-Islamic Interactions
Instructor: Nile Green
Description: Designed for juniors/seniors. Examination of interplay of factors that, from Christian missionaries to Islamic madrasa schools and colonial rebellions, gave shape to multifaceted Muslim reformation in context of colonial modernity.

Iranian 103B: Advanced Persian: Introduction to Classical Persian Prose
Instructor: Domenico Ingenito
Description: Lecture, three hours. Requisite: course 102C. Students who do exceptionally well in course 20C may be permitted to enroll with consent of instructor. May be taken independently for credit.

SPRING QUARTER

Graduate Level:

Arabic 250: Premodern Arabic Literature Seminar
Instructor: Michael Cooperson
Description: Graduate seminar; topic TBD.

Iranian 250: Classical Persian Literature
Instructor: Domenico Ingenito
Description: Seminar, three hours. Requisites: courses 103A, 103B, 103C, 199. May be repeated twice for credit.

Upper Division:

History 105C: History of the Middle East, 1700-Present
Instructor: James Gelvin
Description: Upper division survey of modern Middle Eastern history.

History 109B: The Israel-Palestine Conflict, 1881-Present
Instructor: James Gelvin
Description: Upper division survey of the conflict from a global perspective.

Lower Division:

ME Studies 50C: Making and Studying the Modern Middle East
Instructor: Luke Yarbrough
Description: The modern leg of the Department’s three-quarter introduction to the Middle East & North Africa. Engages with aspects of global modernity as manifested in the cultures of the MENA between the nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries, with an emphasis on contemporary trends. We will ask how the “Middle East” is constructed as a geographical category for study, and how peoples of the region have used language and literature to make meaning, forge connections, and effect change within and beyond the region’s borders. Our conceptual theme is, in fact, “borders”: linguistic, political, ethnic, religious, conceptual, etc. We will examine notions of borders in relation to such topics as translation; migration; political domination and resistance; language difference; ethnicity and sectarianism; gender; and terminological distinction, all seen through the lens of scholarly studies, literature, and films in translation from Arabic, French, Hebrew, Kurdish, Persian, and Turkish. The two major writing projects and the weekly response papers will help you to form your own views on specific questions within this matrix.

Near East 65: Global Time Travel
Instructor: Michael Cooperson
Description: Lower division course. Time travel is our most effective fictional device for asking what past was like, what future will bring, and how our present might look when viewed from other times. Though often associated with Euro-American genre of hard science fiction, time travel is global genre. Study of time travel stories, novels, television productions, and films from variety of periods, regions, and languages in order to explore anxieties genre responds to and other worlds it helps us imagine. Examination of theorists and critics whose work helps explain how time travel interacts with history, narrative, and visuality.