General survey of major themes, genres, and artists in the Arabic literary tradition from the sixth century to the modern era.

Study of the first decades of Israeli literature. Themes include the establishment of a new state in the aftermath of the Holocaust, conflict between Israel and Arab nations, and conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Explore the history, language, style, and themes of the Qur'an.

Designed to give students a foundation in the substantive teachings of the shariah, which comprises not only what we normally think of as law, but also ethics and etiquette.

Examines gender discourses through North African and West African literary works by looking at the role(s) played by Islam and Christianity in the creation of the identities of African men and women. Includes discussion of the question of what gender is, and whether it is socially constructed.

An introduction to the diversity of prophetic literature in the Old Testament, its historical development, social context, and Near Eastern parallels.

Explore the development of complex societies in ancient Greece by studying its prehistory through archaeology.

Delve into all areas of Egyptian daily life from the dawn of the dynasties to the age of Cleopatra.

Examines the figure of Abraham as portrayed in the Bible and the reception of that portrayal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Examine angelology, demonology and magic influence on the lives of early Christians and Christianity.

Examine individual and communal forms of Christian monasticism from the first through fifth centuries CE. Explore the social, economic and religious factors that may have made a life of self-denial attractive to many early Christians and the role of authority in these movements.

Discussion of Egypt's culture, language, and history from the prehistorical period (13,000 BC) to the New Kingdom (1069 BC).

Explore the use of persuasive strategies in an ancient and non-Western culture, that of the Hebrew Bible. Using rhetorical techniques, analyze three types of texts: narratives of interactions between ordinary people and God; interactions between people, God, and authorized prophets; and prayers in prose and poetry.

Examine the legal traditions of the Torah (Pentateuch) and what they reveal about the practice of law and justice in ancient Israel and the wider biblical world.

Study the socio-historical circumstances that gave shape to the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Examine how these five books achieved the status of sacred literature.

Examine theoretical readings and concrete examples of how translation politics, translation-induced reconstruction of literary systems, censorship, manipulation, and market dynamics affect the production, distribution, and reception of translated products in the realm of arts and entertainment, news media and politics, and various academic disciplines in the Middle East, United States, and beyond.

Examine the significance of music in the social and political uprisings of countries across the Middle East.

Examine Arabic literary works (ninth through twentieth centuries) that display humor and its unspoken counterpart, hardship. Consult modern theories of humor and premodern Arabic-Islamic ideas of the jocular.

Introduction to key religious, philosophical, and political ideas from part of the Islamicate world through sustained readings of core texts.

Introduction to some of the most pertinent social and political themes in celebrated films across Arab countries, Turkey, Iran, and Israel and Palestine.

Explore the relationship between movies and fans within a global perspective. Examine case studies from and through the Middle East to understand the resonance of cult media texts around the world.

Examine representations of Muslims in the dominant cultural media of the European Middle Ages, and in cultural media of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries. Explore how Europeans envisioned Muslims, and how Muslims envisioned themselves.

Examine the coalescence of educational theories and national aspirations in the process of shaping child-rearing practices within the Jewish population of Palestine under the Ottoman Empire and the British Mandate and into the first two decades of the State of Israel.

Explore cross cultural contacts between the East and the West during the modern period. Analyze Islamic civilization in the Middle East of the modern era by addressing the development of religion, law, government, and morality during and after the colonial period.

Explore the history and culture of modern Egypt through selected readings in twentieth-century film and fiction.

Explore how Turkish culture is neither static nor monolithic but is continuously contested and redefined. Investigate tensions between secularism and Islam, Orientalist and Occidentalist fantasies, and imperialist and nationalist desires to better understand the sociopolitical dynamics that define Turkish society today.

Examine the cultural production that surrounds key moments of political and social change in the Middle East.

Examine complex politics and poetics behind the translation and marketing of Arab women's writing in the West.

Explore French-language cultural production by authors of Arab origin in France and across France's former colonial and mandate territories. Examine the fraught relationship many of these authors have with French language, literature, and culture, in dialogue with postcolonial theory.

Addresses the role of media in the Middle East, considering communication texts, processes and industries in political, social, economic, and cultural contexts.

Explore myths and legends contained in a variety of ancient sources, including texts from Israel, Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.

Explore the diversity of ethnic and religious minorities found in the Middle East through their history, languages, beliefs, and cultures.

Explore how past, present, local, and regional events inform current Jordanian culture and identity.