A&S 271 Gender in the Muslim and Arab Worlds

This course focuses on gender and sexuality in the Middle East and in Muslim communities around the world. The course materials, from anthropology as well as other disciplines, will challenge you to critically reflect on taken-for-granted categories such as “Muslim,” “Arab,” and “Middle Eastern” by exploring three interrelated themes: 1) the diversity of Muslim women and the heterogeneity of gendered experiences in the Middle East; 2) academic and media representations of Islam and the Middle East; and 3) the complex and complicit relationships between Western feminist movements and other social, political, and military engagements between the “West” and “Islam,” such as the “War on Terror” and the headscarf debates in Europe. The course is organized around weekly key terms that bring together at times seemingly unrelated material in order to think about historical and contemporary circumstances and their linkages in different and more critical ways.

Prerequisite

A&S 102 or A&S 103, or permission of instructor