Modern Arab Thought

(Same as Comparative Literature M288.) While much has been written and said about resurgence and spread of political Islam after collapse of ideology of secular nationalism and failure of Arab left to apprehend exigencies of postrevolutionary/postcolonial moment, little has been devoted to less sensational topic of modern Arab thought despite unmistakable proliferation of critical output produced by Arab thinkers and artists in aftermath of 1967. Course addresses and redresses this glaring imbalance by considering new cultural material—literary, critical, philosophical, artistic, and journalistic—produced before and after al-Nahda but mostly before and after 1967 and fosters insightful approaches to unlikely coexistence in Arab contemporaneity of ever-deepening and generalized crisis and of steady and consolidated development (if not effervescence) of cultural and artistic production.

S/U or letter grading.