Comparative Arab Studies

Limited to graduate students. Investigation of ways in which Arab littérateurs, artists, and intellectuals have perseveringly sought to imagine and construct viable structures of cultural empowerment on pyre of political project of Arab nationalism and in growing response to globalization and consolidation of Western colonial and imperial ideologies in Arab world. Particular attention to technical and experimental modes of expression through which Arab artists working in different genres have engaged with some persistent and recurrent questions related to their mission, vocation, and commitment (iltizam) to fundamental concerns of Arab world, to responsible mimetic urgency, and to general uses/potencies of rhetoric and poetics within contexts of profound asymmetries of power, temporalities, and actualities.

S/U or letter grading.