Arab Society in the Mirror of Culture

Arab Society in the Mirror of Culture
Dr. Elisheva Machlis
 

Overview
The Queue by Egyptian author Basma Abdel (2013), is a critique of the Arab Spring’s authoritarian backlash. Set in an unnamed country after suppression of a popular uprising, the oppressive regime requires its subjects to seek permission for the most trivial tasks. “It wasn’t long before the Gate had made all procedures, paperwork, authorizations and permits… subject to its orders and control.” This course will provide an understanding to modern cultural trends in the Arab world from the early 20th century until the Arab Spring. Arab literature provided an important space to express and critique the shifting social, political and religious trends in the emerging Arab nations. Beginning with Arab renaissance of the Nahda in the late 19th century, the Arab intelligentsia created a merger between cultural revival and political change. The course will view a selection of novels, poems and film from the region as a platform to explore themes such as modernization, poverty, family, locality, gender and traditions, as well as Arabism, anti-colonialism, Islamism and the Palestinian question. The voice of the individual versus the collective will also be viewed as reflecting a dialectical exchange between modernism and post-modernism within a more contemporary Arab discourse.
 

Requirements:
Attendance in classes is mandatory
Mid-term exam (19%)
Final in-class exam (81%)

Reading material:
Kassab, Elizabeth S. Contemporary Arab Thought: Cultural Critique in Comparative Perspective . NY: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Meyer, Stefan G. The Experimental Arabic Novel: Postcolonial Literary Modernism in the Levant . State University of New York Press, 2000.
Ouyang, Wen-Chin. Politics of Nostalgia in the Arabic Novel: Nation-State, Modernity and Tradition. Edinburgh University Press, 2013.
Taha Hussein, The Future of Culture in Egypt (1938).
M Milson, Najib Mahfuz: the Novelist-Philosopher of Cairo (1998).
J Abu-Haidar, "Awlad Haratina" by Najib Mahfuz: an Event in the Arab World”,
Journal of Arabic Literature, 1985.
Malti Douglad, Blindness and Autobiography: Al-Ayyam of Taha Husayn . (2014).
MJ Al-Musawi, The Postcolonial Arabic Novel: Debating Ambivalence (2003).
Shafik, Viola. Arab Cinema: History and Cultural Identity. The American University in Cairo Press, 2007.
L Abu-Lughod,“The Objects of Soap Opera: Egyptian Television and the Cultural Politics of Modernity ” in Worlds Apart: Modernity through the Prism of the Local (Routledge 1995)
Walter Armbrust, “Islamists in Egyptian Cinema”, American Anthropologist 104:3 (2002).
L. Khatib, “Nationalism and Otherness The Representation of Islamic Fundamentalism in Egyptian Cinema”, European Journal of Cultural Studies (2006).
N. G. Yaqub, Drinking from the Well of Poetry: Tradition, Composition, and Identity in the Oral Palestinian Poetry Duel (1999) .
B. M., Giving Voice to Stones: Place and Identity in Palestinian Literature (1994)
Al-Ali, Gender Writing/Writing Gender: the Representation of Women in a Selection of Modern Egyptian Literature (1994).
A. Ball, Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective (2012)
RMA Allen, H Kilpatrick, E de Moor, Love and Sexuality in Modern Arabic Literature (1995).
Ball, Anna. Palestinian Literature and Film in Postcolonial Feminist Perspective. Routledge: 2012.
Elsadda, Hoda. Gender, Nation, and the Arabic Novel: Egypt, 1892-2008. Syracuse University Press: 2012.
Valassopoulos, Anastasia. Contemporary Arab Women Writers: Cultural Expression in Context. Routledge, 2007.