Instructor: M. Al-Musawi
This course responds to the sweeping winds of change in the Arab region, covering a great amount of archival and media material including documentaries, films, narratives, poetry and songs. It substantiates and synthesizes its analysis with a theoretical frame that makes use of Arab intellectual thought in translation, along with legacies of popular revolutions and liberation movements in the Arab region and in the three continents, along with readings of significance in the literature of World War I and II. The course initiates its discussion with experts’ speculations on the difference between the deliberate “creative chaos” as part of an imperial strategy, and popular revolutions that swept some autocratic and dictatorial regimes. To reach a better understanding of this difference, the course will explore the rites of passage through which these movements grow and authenticate their presence befor finding the right medium or occasion to burst out in a volcanic fashion. The course explores: memory, the changing role of the elite, youth movements, people’s leadership, the changing lexicon, conceptualization of nationhood, social media and solidarity, regional specifics and common concerns, and the rise of a new poetics as a confederation of semiotics, rhetoric and expressive devices. In their presentations and research students are encouraged to participate in archival material gathering, analysis of required texts and active particpation in roundtable discussions.
