This course focuses on arts of sound associated with Islam in South Asia and Central Asia (including Iran). We explore how specific musical procedures and uses of sound cut across these Asian regions, and how ideologies, philosophies, and texts—associated with Islam locally,...

Instructor: Khalil Abdur-Rashid

This course will examine Islam and the American Muslim community as a case study which reveals the challenges and perspectives emerging from the encounter of a global faith community in America with the intersection of race, religion, and politics in...

Instructor: Rosie Bsheer

This graduate seminar aims to familiarize students with some of the major debates in the field of modern Middle East...

Instructor: Tarek Masoud

Explores the major political, economic, social, and security challenges facing - and emanating from - the Middle East. Particular attention paid to the causes of the so-called Arab Spring and the prospects for genuine democratization. Explores the role of colonial legacies, Islam, peculiarities of the physical environment, demographic patterns, cultures of patriarchy, the distortions of foreign aid and oil wealth, and the machinations of great powers in generating the region's particular pattern of political development. Embraces a variety of theoretical and empirical literatures, including translated works by Middle Eastern commentators, politicians, and social theorists. Students will emerge from the course with both an understanding of a changing region whose geopolitical importance - to the United States and the world - shows no sign of waning, and a grounding in some of the principal analytic approaches in the study of comparative political systems.

Instructor: Ousmane Kane

The aim of this seminar is to study the evolution of Islamic thought and political practices in Muslim societies from the 19th to the early 21st centuries.

Instructor: Malika Zeghal

This graduate seminar explores the transformation of Islamic institutions in the modern period, such as religious endowments (Awqaf), sharia courts, and Islamic education. We will engage with the historiography of these institutions and with primary sources in Arabic that will help us open new paths for research.

Instructor: Ousmane Kane

An estimated 450 to 500 million Muslims live in Africa—close to a third of the global Muslim population. The overwhelming majority of them lives in the northern half of the continent, above the equator. The spread of Islam increased the contact between the peoples of North Africa, the Sahara, and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. The course is designed to provide an understanding of the spread of Islam and the formation and transformation of Muslim societies in Africa.... Read more about HDS 3357/Islamic Civilization 179: Critical Perspectives on the Dynamics and Development of Islam in Africa

This is a course about fundamental problems of participation, democratic governance, and conflict in contemporary political systems. It will provide students with an analytical toolkit for understanding and acting on the political dimensions of policy problems.... Read more about Political Institutions and Public Policy

Instructor: Gulru Necipoglu-Kafadar

Architecture of the eastern Mediterranean basin (at Italian, Ottoman, and Mamluk courts) with emphasis on cross-cultural encounters and transmission of the Romano-Byzantine heritage, science and technology, architectural practice, ornament, urban design, military, religious, and domestic architecture.