New Spring Classes Available!
Explore some of the exciting New Spring Classes offered for the first time at Columbia in 2021
A number of new classes are being offered at Columbia University for the first time this Spring. From Dr Elaine Van Dalen’s course covering medical practice in pre-modern West Asia to to Matthew L Keegan's course exploring the playful, edgy texts of the Maqama to contemplate new ways of understanding the relationship between adab and the Islamic tradition, there’s a lot to choose from!
Each of these classes fulfills the requirements for the the MEI master programs, the Graduate Certificate, and the SIPA Regional Specialization. See all available classes for the Spring 2021 semester here.
Islam in Popular Culture (GU4619)
Day/Time: Thursdays 4:10-6pm
Instructor: Najam Haider
This course interrogates seminal issues in the academic study of Islam through its popular representation in various forms of media from movies and television to novels and comic books. The class is structured around key theoretical readings from a range of academic disciplines ranging from art history and anthropology to comparative literature and religion. The course begins by placing the controversies surrounding the visual depiction of Muhammad in historical perspective (Gruber). This is followed by an examination of modern portrayals of Muslims in film that highlights both the vilification of the “other” (Shaheen) and the persistence of colonial discourses centered on the “native informant” (Mamdani). Particular emphasis is given to recent pop cultural works that challenge these simplistic discourses of Islam. The second half of the course revisits Muhammad, employing an anthropological framework (Asad) to understand the controversies surrounding Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses. The obsession with a gendered depiction of Islam is then examined through an anthropological framework that sheds light on the problems of salvation narratives (Abu Lughod). The course ends with a look at the unique history of Islam in America, particularly the tension between immigrant and African-American communities.
Playful Tradition: Adab, Islam, and the Maqama (GU4273)
Day/Time: M 4:10pm-6:00pm
Instructor: Matthew L Keegan
Notes: No knowledge of Arabic is required.
Is adab Islamic? The term adab is usually translated as "literature" or "belles-letters," but in addition to narrative material and poetry, adab encompassed a wide array of discourses on behavior, ethics, and aesthetics. There is a long tradition of seeing adab as "secular." In particular, "edgy" genres depicting wine, bawdy talk, parodies of Islamic discourses, and criminal activities are often seen as critical of Islam. This seminar examines these playful, edgy texts to rethink the ways in which scholarship has limned the relationship between adab and Islam. In particular, we will look at the maqāma, a genre of Arabic prose that usually features an eloquent rogue who disguises himself as a preacher, a mufti, and a pious ascetic, among many other things. These maqāmas were at the center of Islamic education for centuries, and they were taught and composed from al-Andalus to Indonesia. We will read maqāmas and related genres that engage playfully with the Islamic tradition or are otherwise portrayed as edgy. We will also critically evaluate the scholarship on these texts. The goal is to contemplate new ways of understanding the relationship between adab and the Islamic tradition.
Medicine and Disease in the Pre-Modern I (GU4239)
Day/Time F 4:10pm-6:00pm
Instructor: Elaine Van Dalen
Throughout the classical and post-classical periods, medical actors from different social and intellectual backgrounds aimed to make sense of the human body and disease, and worked to provide treatments and preserve health. In this class we will consider who these actors were, examining the categories of learned physicians versus practitioners and studying the role women played in health care. We will study practices of medical education and evaluate regulatory systems that determined access to the medical profession. We will also consider how physicians believed they could obtain knowledge about medical phenomena, and how they theorized human pathology, physiology, and epidemics. We will ask to what extent the theoretical, written treatises that survive today are representative of everyday medical practice in pre-modern West Asia. We inspect additional archeological evidence such as talismans and magic bowls in order to study popular and religious medical approaches. We will do this while tracing the development of the Greco-Arabic medical tradition alongside evolving Islamic theological views and Prophetic medicine, covering a period of roughly five centuries from the early ʿAbbasid period to the Black Death in the 14th century.
Remapping Algeria: Poetics and Politics (GU4440)
Day/Time T 2:10pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Madeleine Dobie
This course, offered in conjunction with the Center for Spatial Research, explores representations of space in contemporary Algerian literature and film, considering how spatial imaginaries engage with changing social and political landscapes. The arts in Algeria have often been approached from the perspective of their narration of national history, notably the country’s emblematic War of Independence against France (1954-62). This course shifts the focus to the self-conscious ways in which contemporary film and literature explore social and political dynamics distilled in the experience of space: issues such as urban crowding, intra and inter-national migration, environmental damage, real estate development and speculation, assertions of regional identities and the reclaiming of public space by protest movements. In addition to considering forms of spatial representation in contemporary Algerian literature and cinema we look outside the text/image at sites and physical locations of cultural production such as publishing houses, book fairs, film festivals, cinema clubs, arts associations and literary cafes. Throughout the course our enquiry will be guided by questions about the poetics and politics of space, the definition and variety of public and private spaces, and the role of cartography as a technology of power and contestation
Islam and the Secular: Rethinking Concepts of Religion in North-West Africa and the Middle East (GU4213)
Day/Time MR 2:10pm-4:00pm
Instructor: Mohamed Ait Amer Meziane
The class offers a critical discussion of the conceptual apparatus of the anthropology of Islam and secularism and of the ways in which it shapes recent interventions in history and theory but also in Islamic studies with a particular focus on North-Western Africa and the Middle East. The questions that will be examined during the class read as follows: 1. What is Islam: a religion or a cultural formation, a discursive tradition or a way of life? How is one to construct a definition of Islam beyond orientalist legacies? Can one define Islam anthropologically outside the tradition itself? 2. How did French and British Empires transform or destroyed Islamic institutions while governing Muslims in the Middle East and North-West Africa? Are these colonial technologies Christian or secular and is there a significant difference between Christian slavery and secular colonialism? To what extent is secularism reducible to an imperial ideology or to Christianity itself? 3. How did Muslims respond to the challenge of modernity and to European imperial hegemony? How can one think philosophically within the Islamic tradition after the hegemony of Europe and colonialism?
The below classes are taught at Union Theological Seminary (UTS), but Columbia students can register.
Islamic Ethics (IE 217)
3 credits
Jerusha T. Rhodes
This course introduces the central concerns, sources, and debates of Islamic ethics. We explore the relationship between Islamic ethics and other Islamic religious sciences-including usul ul-Qur'an (Qur'anic sciences), fiqh (law), and ibadat (ritual), and survey key classical perspectives and scholars (available in translation). The course then examines contemporary perspectives on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, interreligious relations, economics, environmentalism, medical ethics, and violence and pacifism. Throughout all, emphasis is placed on developing proficiency in the terminology and tools of Islamic ethical thought; on understanding the interconnections between various conceptions of the Divine, the human person, and society; and on understanding the ways in which diversity and context shape ethical perspectives.
Comparative Feminist Theology: Islam and Christianity (IE 326)
3 credits
Jerusha T. Rhodes
This course explores the feminist theological thought in Islam and Christianity, utilizing the theoretical lens of comparative theology. It aims to cultivate an understanding of both traditions by exploring theological methods (the “hows”) and theological subjects (the “whats”). It also probes the manner in which critical comparison of the two traditions complicates and potentially enriches each tradition.