Fall 2022

HIST-109: Islamic World

Taught by Jonathan A.C. Brown
From humble beginnings nearly 1500 years ago, to enormous power and prestige in the Middle Ages, to political decline and foreign occupation in the modern era, Islam has developed into a highly diverse, global tradition representing nearly one quarter of the world’s population. Yet it is most widely known through caricatures of terrorists and despots. This course examines that phenomenon. It focuses on the historical development of Muslim communities and their interactions with European and other powers. It emphasizes the impact of those interactions on Islam’s ideological and political developments. The interaction between religion and politics is a major sub-theme of the course.

INAF-100: Islam and the West | Proseminar 

Taught by Jonathan A.C. Brown
Academics, journalists and policy makers regularly refer to Islam, the West and the knotty question of Islam and the West. Stepping outside of ‘Islam’ and ‘the West’, however, we see that neither is a concrete and unchanging reality. Both exist as ideas conceived by particular communities, internally disputed and perceived by others. This course will examine this conceptual knot through in-depth readings on how societies in the US (and Western Europe) understand ‘liberalism,’ ‘secularism’ and ‘Islam/Muslims as threat’ within the context of debates over the nature of Islam, the West and their proper relationship. We will also use travel literature as a way to explore how visitors from one of these civilizations experienced the other.

INAF-296: The Muslim Jesus in Eastern Christian Thought

Taught by Ryann Craig
This course explores how the Eastern Christian traditions understood and responded to Jesus as he is presented in the Qur’an, the Hadith, and other Islamic genres. Students will be introduced to a variety of literary genres, argumentation approaches, and theological positions among the Eastern Christian and Muslim communities from the seventh through the fourteenth centuries. The Syriac Orthodox Church and the Church of the East, as well as Chalcedonian Melkites, were the first Christian communities to live alongside the emerging community of believers gathered around Muhammad and the revelation of the Qur’an. Through Eastern Christian theological literary engagement—found in epistolary exchanges, public debates, historical notations, and direct refutations—this course examines Christian conceptions of the Qur’anic Jesus, the Jesus found in the Hadith, and the Islamic Jesus of later interpretive works in comparative perspective. Students will gain familiarity with foundational texts, teachings, and tendencies of each religious community, as well as the Christological disputes that existed among the Eastern Christian traditions and how this influenced their engagement with “the Muslim Jesus.”

INAF-397: Muslim Women & The West

Taught by Shenila Khoja Moolji
Muslim women often appear in Western imagination as oppressed, silent, and victimized. This course offers an alternate account of Muslim women by centering texts and aesthetics produced by them, along with ethnographic studies that give us a glimpse into their lives in the West. We encounter Muslim women through non-normative frames of agency, joy, community-building, and care. We observe the myriad ways in which they construct preferred futures against racist, capitalist, and heteronormative logics. A major thrust of the course is studying the lifeworlds of Shia Muslim women (a minority interpretive community within Islam).

INAF-407: Islam, Democracy, and Global Terrorism

Taught by John L. Esposito 
Arab pro-democracy uprisings (the Arab Spring) that toppled autocratic regimes, the collapse of state authority challenges of governance, counter-revolutions and the role of militant extremist groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS raise questions about the future of political Islam and democracy. We will focus on the phenomenon of political Islam in the Middle East with some reference to Pakistan and Indonesia, examining the causes, implications, and consequences for the future of Islam in politics. The course is divided into four parts: analysis of the Islamic order and the model(s) that inspire modern Islamist activists, the ideas of the main ideologues of contemporary Islamic movements; approaches to the understanding of contemporary political Islam and the Islamic movements; and case studies of movements in different contexts. It also probes the relationship between Islamism and the “Arab Spring” as well as global terrorism. Finally, the course will conclude with a critical analysis of the future of political Islam, democracy and global terrorism and US-Muslim world relations.