CLME

208 Knox Hall Musawi MDES UN3930 Iraq: War, Love, and Exile. 3.00 points. This course studies and explores a number of Iraqi narratives that have appeared since 2003 and that have a distinctive stylistic and thematic richness with great bearing on social, economic, cultural, and political life in Iraq. Seen against a history of the country and the region, and in conversation with some Afro-Asian and Latin American narratives of war and displacement, these writings assume global significance in our reading of such thematic issues like war, love, exile, and loss. While always using the past as a background, a source and repository of recollections, the challenge of the 2003 Anglo-America invasion and its institutionalization of segregation and rupture to keep Iraq in perpetual chaos, is present in the texts. Every narrative sheds light on a number of issues, especially war, horror, loss, trauma, passion and dislocation. nt This richness in detail is brought up through a number of stylistic innovations that put this writing at the forefront of world cultures and human concerns. An introductory lecture builds up a genealogy for trauma since the Epic of Gilgamesh (2700 BC.) and the lamentations of

Subject

CLME

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

207 Knox Hall Dalen Barnard College Catalogue 2025-2026 159 CLME GU4226 ARABIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY GLOBAL DIMENSIONS. 4.00 points. This course draws a map of Arab thought and culture in its multiple engagements with other cultures. It works globally along two lines: a theoretical one that accommodates conceptualizations of self- narrative in relation to shifting categories of center and margin; and a thematic one that selects a number of Arabic autobiographical texts with strong thematic concerns that cut across multiple cultures. Although Europe sounds at times more conspicuous in early 20th century autobiography, the Afro-Asian and Latin American topographical and historical itinerary and context are no less so, especially in writings we associate with societal and cultural transformations. More than historical accounts, these intellectual itineraries speak for the successes and failures of the secular ideology of the Arab nation-state. They convey the struggle of intellectuals-- as self-styled leaders, for an ideal state on the ruins of the past. The course studies a number of autobiographical works; memoirs and reminiscences that are meant to rationalize and reproduce a writer’s experience. Probably self-censored, these serve nevertheless as trajectories for a secular journey rather than one from denial to affirmation. Staunchly established in modernity and its nahdah paradigms, most of these writings are secular itineraries that rarely end in a search for faith. They are the journeys of a generation of Arab intellectuals who are facing many crises, but not the crisis of faith. They provide another look at the making of the Arab intelligentsia- and probably the Afro-Asian and Latin American one, since the early 20th century, and help us discern not only achievements on the level of education and public service , but also the mounting discontent with failures that have been wrapping the formation of the nation state. No prior knowledge of Arabic language is required Fall 2025: CLME GU4226 Course Section/Call Times/Location Instructor Points Enrollment

Subject

CLME

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu

208 Knox Hall Musawi MDES GU4226 Arabic Literature # the Long 19th Century. 4.00 points. What came before the Arabic novel? How did authors writing in Arabic lment in the 19th century conceive of and debate the terms of modernity and literature? The purpose of this graduate seminar is first to engage with recent trends in scholarship on the Nahda ("Renaissance") and second to read the entirety of three significant works of Arabic literature in translation: al-Shidyaq's Leg Over Leg (1855), Khalil al-Khouri's Oh No! I am Not European! (1859-61), and Jurji Zaydan's Tree of Pearls, Queen of Egypt (1914). Knowledge of Arabic is not required, but an optional Arabic reading group will run concurrently with the class CLME GU4231 COLD WAR ARAB CULTURE. 4.00 points. CC/GS/SEAS: Partial Fulfillment of Global Core Requirement This course studies the effects and strategies of the cold war on Arab writing, education, arts and translation, and the counter movement in Arab culture to have its own identities. As the cold war functioned and still functions on a global scale, thematic and methodological comparisons are drawn with Latin America, India and Africa

Subject

CLME

Type

course

Edition

2025-2026

Source

catalog.barnard.edu