ARABIA IMAGINED

As the site of the 7th century revelation of the Quran and the present day location of the sacred precincts of Islam, Arabia is the direction of prayer for Muslims worldwide and the main destination for pilgrimage. Arabia also provides a frame for diverse modes of thought and practice and for cultural expression ranging from the venerable literature of the 1001 Nights to the academic disciplines of Islam and contemporary social media, such as Twitter.

We thus will approach Arabia as a global phenomenon, as a matter of both geographic relations and the imagination. While offering an introduction to contemporary anthropological research, the course will engage in a critical review of related western conceptions, starting with an opening discussion of racism and Islamophobia. In the format of a Global Core course, the weekly assignments are organized around English translations of Arabic texts, read in conjunction with recent studies by anthropologists.