Call Number | 13211 |
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Day & Time Location |
T 2:10pm-4:00pm 208 Knox Hall |
Points | 4 |
Grading Mode | Standard |
Approvals Required | None |
Instructor | Muhsin Al-Musawi |
Type | SEMINAR |
Method of Instruction | In-Person |
Course Description | This course works along a number of axial structures that aim to let texts voice their informing theoretical, political, and poetic strategies. It draws on war narratives in other parts of the world, especially Vietnam, insofar as these find their way into Arabic writing. A poetics of prose gives these narratives the power of literary production that makes them more readable, appealing, and provocative than ordinary journalistic reporting. Through close readings of a number of Arabic war novels and some long narrative poems, this course proposes to address war in its varieties not only as liberation movements in Algeria and Palestine, but also as an engagement with invasions, as in Iraqi narratives of war, or as conflict as was the case between Iran and Iraq, 1980-1988, as proxy wars in other parts of the region , or ‘civil’ wars generated and perpetuated by big powers. Although writers are no longer the leaders of thought as in the first half of the 20th century, they resume different roles of exposition, documentation, reinstatement of identities, and geographical and topographical orientation. Narrators and protagonists are not spectators but implicated individuals whose voices give vent to dreams, desires, intimations, and expectations. They are not utterly passive, however. Behind bewilderment and turbulence, there is a will to expose atrocity and brutality. Writing is an effort to regain humanity in an inhuman situation. The course is planned under thematic and theoretical divisions: one that takes writing as a deliberate exposure of the censored and repressed; another as a counter shock and awe strategy implemented under this name in the wars on Iraq whereby brutalities are laid bare; and a third that claims reporting in order to explore its limits and complicity. On the geographical level, it takes Algeria, Palestine as locations for liberation movements; Iraq as a site of death; Egypt as the space for statist duplicity and camouflage; and Lebanon as an initial stage for a deliberate exercise in a seemingly civil war. A number of films will be shown as part of students’ presentations. |
Web Site | Vergil |
Department | Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies |
Enrollment | 23 students (24 max) as of 9:06AM Sunday, December 8, 2024 |
Subject | Middle East |
Number | GU4259 |
Section | 001 |
Division | Interfaculty |
Section key | 20241MDES4259W001 |