“Culture, Conflict, and the City in the Middle East” is an interdisciplinary seminar that interrogates the vibrant cultural productivity of some of the major urban centers of the Arab world. Using the eastern Mediterranean metropolises of Cairo, Baghdad, Beirut, and Amman as case studies, the course will introduce students to the modern cultural history of this part of the world, through an examination of literary and artistic manifestations of protest, war, urban displacement, and forced migration place in these major cities. By focusing on literature, film, and visual art produced in these cities since 1967, the course asks students to interrogate how the city has shaped artists’ creativity, as well as how their works interpret the messy and rapid processes of modern urbanization and coexistence. It will examine how artists, writers and filmmakers have imagined ways of belonging to urban space, remembered (and/or forgotten) violence that took place there, and defined who is an insider and outsider. Other topics include the politics of translation, representation of sexual, racial, and religious minorities, and how modern political ideologies are debated by urban cultural producers in their works.

After the course ends on the Rutgers-Newark campus, students will have a two-week embedded component in Amman, Jordan hosted by Sijal Institute for Arabic Language and Culture. During this time students will attend seminars with the scholars, writers, artists, and filmmakers, many of whose works they will have recently read in the part of the course that focuses on Amman. Students will also have tours of the cities of Amman, Um Qais, and Salt that focus on issues covered in class (e.g., how the city chooses to memorialize or forget events, cultural heritage, the impact of climate change on city life, refugee communities, etc.), an art gallery tour to become familiarized with the burgeoning visual art scene in Amman, and a short, daily crash course in colloquial Levantine Arabic. Before leaving Jordan, students will take a trip to the Wadi Rum desert and visit Petra. This extraordinary extension of the RU-N classroom will be an intensive, experiential learning experience that brings the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the texts read in the classroom directly to students.

“Culture, Conflict, and the City in the Modern Middle East” will cover the way the contemporary Arab cultural scene interacts with current politics, grand narratives, and representation of the city and urban life. As an interdisciplinary course, students will learn critical modes of reading and writing about literature, visual art, and cultural history in this part of the world. Moreover, the course will teach students about the recent history of the Middle East with an emphasis on the Eastern Arab world.

The course is aimed firstly at students with an interest in the modern Middle East and the Arab world, in particular. As an upper level, writing intensive course, it targets students who are interested in taking a deeper look at modern and contemporary culture from the eastern Arab world. The course’s interdisciplinary approach should be attractive to students with interest in modern Middle Eastern history, society and culture. As a 400-level undergraduate course, graduate students studying in the Urban Humanities Track of the Global Urban Studies PhD Program at RU-N may also be interested in the course and, with permission and extra work assigned, may also enroll.

Course Outcomes

The course has several learning objectives. On the Newark campus students will:

• Learn about the relationship between culture and politics in an important part of the Middle East

• Learn to write politically and historically informed analyses of cultural texts from this part of the world
• Improve skills in close reading and analytical writing about the arts in context

In Amman, the students will have the opportunities to:

• Gain valuable on-site experience learning about culture, politics, and society in one of the most important cities in the Middle East by visiting the spaces that they will have read about

• Hear directly from writers, artists, and filmmakers about their creative process, their relationship to the place that inspires their work, and their collaboration with translators
• Learn the basics of the spoken Arabic of the Levant or improve their level of Modern Standard Arabic.