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Spring 2023

ARAB-406: Slavery & Islam

Taught by Jonathan A.C. Brown
Islam has been in the news. And slavery has been in the news. And ‘Islam & slavery’ has been in the news. These are some major understatements. When ISIS achieved prominence in 2014, Western audiences were stunned by the movement’s revival of enslaving prisoners of war. Many, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, were shocked at ISIS’ justification of slavery with reference to Islam’s scriptures and laws. But the debate over Islam & slavery is much older, going back centuries. It forms part of the global history of the phenomenon called slavery, a phenomenon that is as controversial at the level of academic study as it has been in its real-world manifestations. This course will examine efforts of philosophers and scholars to describe, justify or criticize a spectrum of phenomena we call slavery. It will place the Islamic tradition within this setting, charting the history, laws and practices of slavery in Islamic civilization, following it all the way up to debates over abolition and the efforts of some to revive and defend slavery today.

ARAB-666: Race in Islamic Tradition  

Taught by Jonathan A.C. Brown
This course will introduce students to primary- and secondary source-readings on the Arab-Islamic tradition’s conceptualization of how descent, climate, culture and divine providence defined individuals and groups. It will explore how this medieval and early-modern tradition can be viewed through modern scholarship on race and racism. Reading knowledge of Arabic is required.

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-479: Muslims on the Margins 

Taught by Shenila Khoja Moolji
Margins are often considered sites of deficit due to their distance from the center. However, following bell hooks, this course reframes the margin as a site of knowledge, possibility, and relationality. We consider a range of Muslim groups who either agentically occupy the margins or have been pushed to the margins by way of exclusion. We ask conceptual questions about the relationship between margins and marginalization, about margins as a site of radical possibility, and about what we can learn from studying the lifeworlds, aesthetics, and thought of Muslims on the margins. The course will center the work of Shia, women, queer, and working-class Muslims.

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