Arabic Languages (ARAB)

Courses

ARAB 1010 (4) Beginning Arabic 1

Introduces students to speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills in the standard means of communication in the Arab world. This course is proficiency-based. All activities within the course are aimed at placing the student in the context of the native-speaking environment from the very beginning.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 1011 (3) Introduction to Arab and Islamic Civilizations

Provides an interdisciplinary overview of the cultures of the Arabic-speaking peoples of Southwest Asia and North Africa from the rise of Islam in the 7th century to the present. Readings include historical, religious, literary and cultural texts from both the medieval and modern eras. Taught in English.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Core Curr: Human Diversity
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Diversity-Global Perspective
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 1020 (4) Beginning Arabic 2

Continuation of ARAB 1010.

Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of ARAB 1010 (minimum grade C).
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 2110 (4) Intermediate Arabic 1

Proficiency-based course emphasizes speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Covers a variety of topics. Students give classroom presentations and write short essays in Arabic. Speaking ability is assessed through an oral proficiency interview.

Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of ARAB 1020 (minimum grade C).
Additional Information: GT Pathways: GT-AH4 - Arts Hum: Foreign Languages
Arts Sci Core Curr: Foreign Language
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Foreign Language
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 2120 (4) Intermediate Arabic 2

Continuation of ARAB 2110.

Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of ARAB 2110 (minimum grade C).
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 2231 (3) Love, Loss and Longing in Classical Arabic Literature

Surveys Arabic literature from the sixth through the eighteenth centuries. It offers an introduction to Arabic literature, namely prose and poetry, through its key texts as well as the range of themes and techniques found in this literature, and it lays the groundwork for contextualizing the literature in the framework of other literary traditions. Taught in English.

Grading Basis: Letter Grade
Additional Information: Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 2320 (3) The Muslim World, 600-1250

Focusing on the history of the Muslim World in the age of the caliphates, this course takes an interdisciplinary, comparative approach to the development of Islamicate society, focusing on social structure, politics, economics and religion. Students will use primary and secondary sources to write a research paper, and make in-class presentations to cultivate critical thinking, research and writing skills. Taught in English.

Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: RLST 2320
Grading Basis: Letter Grade
Additional Information: Arts Sci Core Curr: Human Diversity
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Diversity-Global Perspective
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3110 (4) Advanced Arabic 1

Designed to train students further in the four language skills (writing, speaking, reading, listening/comprehension) at an advanced level. Enables students to acquire a better and broader understanding of Arabic culture and texts drawn from various genres of Arabic letters.

Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of ARAB 2120 (minimum grade C).
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3120 (4) Advanced Arabic 2

Continues training in the four language skills (writing, speaking, reading, listening/comprehension) at an advanced level. Enables students to acquire a better and broader understanding of Arabic culture and texts drawn from various genres of Arabic letters.

Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of ARAB 3110 (minimum grade C).
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3220 (3) Arabian Nights, Arabian Days: Popular Literature in the Arab World and Beyond

Explores the development of popular literature in Arabic, studying the Arabian Nights and related genres including tribal epics, poetry, and plays. We will interrogate the cultural, class, and textual boundaries between popular literature and courtly, elite works across time. We will also explore the modern, Western enterprise of ¿discovering¿ and engaging with Arabic literary works, examining how global excitement for texts like the Nights has created new possibilities for cultural production and exchange.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities

ARAB 3221 (3) The Making of Middle Eastern Identities: Arabs and Their ¿Others¿

Who is ¿Arab,¿ anyway? When did Arabs first develop a sense of ethnic identity, and out of what raw materials did it grow and take shape? How did this identity play off of, merge with, or get challenged by contact with different peoples as the horizons of the Arab world grew and changed, and how does this manifest in literature and the historical record? This course offers a discussion-oriented, upper-level seminar that focused on sources in which the author, protagonists, or intended audience engage with ethno-racially non-Arab cultures.

Recommended: Prerequisite Intro to Religion or other course focusing on Islam and/or Middle Eastern history or culture.
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities

ARAB 3230 (3) Islamic Culture and the Iberian Peninsula

Examines Islamic, especially Arab, culture and history as it relates to the Iberian Peninsula from 92 Ah/711 Ce to the present. Taught in English.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Core Curr: Historical Context
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3231 (3) In the Footsteps of Travelers: Travel Writing in Arabic Lit

Offers an excursion into the role and significance of travel and travel writing in Arabic literature in translation. We will read and discuss a range of literary works written by, about, and for travelers. More broadly, this course will offer an opportunity for undergraduates to expand their understanding of literature and the arts. Taught in English.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3241 (3) Art in Islamic Cultures

Offers an overview of art in Islamic cultures. Discusses a range of literary texts and images in order to understand these cultures. Offers an opportunity for undergraduates to expand their understanding of literature and art history. Taught in English.

Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: ARTH 3241
Additional Information: Arts Sci Core Curr: Literature and the Arts
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English

ARAB 3330 (3) The Arabic Novel

Focusing on the origins and development of the novel genre in the Arabic tradition, this course examines both the aesthetic qualities of the genre as an artistic form and the ways that it has depicted and intervened in the modern social, political, and cultural upheavals that have shaped the Arab world in the 20th century. Authors include Najib Mahfuz, Abd al Rahman Munif, Hanan al-Shaykh, and Ghassan Kanafani. Taught in English.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3331 (3) Arabic Poetry

Introduces students to the vibrant world of Arabic poetic production, which has defined the cultural landscape of the Arab world and the broader Middle East for over one thousand years and continues to play a central part in the Arabic literary scene today. Some of this poetry has been translated into English, and translated Arabic poetry will serve as our gateway to better understanding why poetry is the diwan, or record, of the Arabs.

ARAB 3340 (3) Representing Islam

Explores the cultural politics of representations of the Arab and Islamic worlds both with an emphasis on literary representations of the Islamic world in travel narratives and novels from both the West and the Arab world. Examines historical, anthropological, and visual texts to consider how Islam has been narrated in colonial European imaginings about the Islamic world as well as contemporary representations. Taught in English.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3350 (3) Narrating the City: Literary Mappings of the Urban Landscape

Examines literary narratives primarily from the Arabic tradition through focusing on the relationship of literature to the development and transformations of cities and urban spaces in the modern period. Begins with readings of 19th century European narratives that chronicle the changing space of the modern city followed by urban narratives from the Arabic literary tradition in order to comparatively examine how "universal" processes of modernization, development, and globalization in the modern world have been narrated. Writers include Mahfouz, Munif, al-Takarli, al-Aswani, Celik, Abu Lughod. Taught in English.

Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 3360 (3) Tradition, Authenticity, and Reform in Islam

Introduces students to the Islamic genre of hadith, or Prophetic traditions. The main concern of the course is to develop an understanding of how prophetic religious authority was understood and communicated in written form and what the relationship of the hadith form has been to alternative claims on prophetic authority in Islam. Finally, the course examines the role that the Prophetic hadith -- and their contestation -- have played in Islamic reform movements during the modern period.

Recommended: Prerequisite ARAB 1011.
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities

ARAB 3410 (3) Gender, Sexuality and Culture in the Modern Middle East

Examines the issues of gender and sexuality in the modern Middle East and North Africa from the colonial period to the present, focusing on how feminist movements, Arab women's writing, and constructions of gender and sexuality have been shaped by local, national and international factors. Taught in English.

Equivalent - Duplicate Degree Credit Not Granted: WGST 3410
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Arts Sci Gen Ed: Diversity-Global Perspective
Departmental Category: Arabic Courses in English
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 4200 (3) Advanced Readings in Arabic

Develops student proficiency and communication in modern standard Arabic at the advanced (4th year) level. Emphasis placed on developing reading comprehension, speaking, and writing skills.

Requisites: Requires prerequisite course of ARAB 3120 (minimum grade C).
Additional Information: Arts Sci Gen Ed: Distribution-Arts Humanities
Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content

ARAB 4250 (3) Arabic Media

Designed to provide students with advanced Arabic language skills for use in the media. By negotiating authentic materials in Arabic, students will gain a perspective on global issues in the Arab and Islamic world and will attain a better awareness of Arab and Islamic culture.

ARAB 4840 (1-3) Independent Study

Department consent required.

Repeatable: Repeatable for up to 6.00 total credit hours.
Additional Information: Departmental Category: Arabic
Departmental Category: Asia Content