Class Schedules

This course is taught jointly between the department of Religious Studies and the department of Classics, by a specialist in the Roman East and a specialist in classical India. We will start on either side of this world, with Alexander the Great and Ashoka, exploring the relationship between empire and religion from Rome to India in the world's crossroads for the thousand years between Alexander and the rise of Islam.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course is taught jointly between the department of Religious Studies and the department of Classics, by a specialist in the Roman East and a specialist in classical India. We will start on either side of this world, with Alexander the Great and Ashoka, exploring the relationship between empire and religion from Rome to India in the world's crossroads for the thousand years between Alexander and the rise of Islam.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course provides an introduction to Middle Eastern history, politics, and cultural life through the lens of film. Over the course of the semester, we will examine the development of both local and regional cinematic traditions; the role of film in the production of collective memory of conflict and war; techniques and visual rhetorics of ethnographic film; and the power relations inherent in the cinematic gaze. Readings will offer an introduction to methods of film analysis as well as to the political and artistic history of the modern Middle East.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course will explore the art and architecture of the Islamic world from the time of the Prophet Mohammed to the 18th century. The lectures and class discussions will focus on culturally specific concepts of design and aesthetics in the vast geography from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Subcontinent, and analyze a variety of genres including architecture, glass, wood and metal working, painting, calligraphy and ceramics in their political and socio-economic contexts. Within these chronological, geographical and typological frameworks, this course will focus on special themes such as patronage, art and politics, figural representation, religious vs. secular art, and the impact of pre-Islamic Near Eastern heritage and Christianity on the development of Islamic forms and styles.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WP
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course charts the formation of Islam and the expansion of Muslim peoples, from the life of the Prophet Muhammad to the Mongol conquest of Baghdad. It will examine Muslim institutions, beliefs, and ritual practices in their historical contexts. In addition to the basics of Muslim practice and belief, the class will introduce students to mystic traditions (Sufism), Islamicate statecraft, and intellectual/legal traditions as well as cultural trends including art, architecture, and literature.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores the art and architecture of ancient Western Asia from the earliest agricultural societies in the 10th millennium BCE to the arrival of Islam in the 7th century CE. Within this historical framework the lectures and class discussions will focus on culturally specific concepts of design, representation and aesthetics in ancient Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia and Syro-Palestine, and explore their uses in politics, imperialism, burial practices, private rituals and state cults. The lectures will explore topics such as the development of narrative representation, monumental public art, portraiture, small-scale glyptic arts and the design, and production of personal ornaments such as jewelry.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

This course will explore the art and architecture of the medieval Christian world from the time of Constantine the Great (306-337 CE) to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The lectures and class discussions will focus on the role of images and relics in Christianity as well as the developments in sacred and secular architecture across Europe and the Byzantine empire. Special emphasis will be given to certain trends such as the foundation of monasteries, pilgrimage, icon and relic worship, and the emergence of Romanesque and Gothic styles in architecture, which changed the urban and rural topography of the continent.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Fine arts

Course Materials

Through Orientalist and Colonial "Feminist" lenses Arab and Middle Eastern women have been pigeonholed into a multitude of binaries: invisible/hyper visible, silent/silenced, submissive/unruly, oppressed victim/violent terrorist, etc. By de-centering European and U.S. dominated discourse, we will examine feminist movements in both Arab and Iranian countries and their diasporas. From fights for women’s education in 1920’s Egypt to the Arab Springs in 2011, Indigenous feminist movements like the 2019 "No Free Homeland Without Free Women" work of Tal’at in Palestine and Iran’s Jin, Jîyan, Azadî ("Women, Life, Freedom") movement in 2022, to the work of the Palestinian Feminist Collective against colonial feminism in the wake of October 7th, we will explore women’s movements against intra-cultural patriarchy, liberal/Western feminisms, and colonialism/imperialism from the 20th century up through today's political world. Through this course, students develop familiarity with anti-colonial feminist language and gain necessary historical context required to challenge ongoing erasure of the roles of Arab/Middle Eastern women in liberation movements.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:

Course Materials