Undergraduate Course: Religion and Culture in the Modern Middle East (DIVI10115)
Course Outline
| School | School of Divinity |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | Religious diversity animates much of the cultural, intellectual, and political development in the modern Middle East. This course seeks to investigate the complexities of cultural formation in the Middle East. From early Christian Arabists in the Levantine and Druze intellectuals investigating Islamic civilizational decline and renovation to the rise of televangelism and embattled religiosities after the Arab Spring, this course applies a multi-method approach to the question of culture and cultural production. Students will have the opportunity to explore the question of religion and culture in film, music, literature, news reports (in translation) as well as exploring secondary literature. |
| Course description |
Academic Description
This course provides students with an intradisciplinary approach to the study of religion, religious communities, intellectuals, revolutionaries, and reformists in culture-making in the modern Middle East. It covers a wide range of topics that highlight the complexity and internal diversity of cultural and religious formations from the early 19th century to the present day. By incorporating a study of primary sources - such as film, intellectual scholarship from the region, and news articles - to burgeoning literature, this course aims at a well rounded and expansive understanding of religion and culture. It will highlight the ways in which the the experiences the Middle East has had with modernization, secularization, religious resurgence, and conflict are contested both in society and in scholarship. As such, the goal of this course is to orient students to a deeper understanding of the political, social, cultural, and religious transformations that have developed as a result of modernity and modernization in the Middle East.
Outline Content
The course aims to provide students with pertinent skills that enables them to develop broader understandings of religion and culture in the modern Middle East. Beginning from a study of the religious, intellectual, and political history to sectarian relations, gender, and religious revivalism. The course provides students with deeper insights into the role religious communities have played in culture-making in different political settings and historical moments. The topics this course covers ranges from the role of 19th and 20th century Christian intellectuals, Jewish revolutionaries, and Muslim and Druze thinkers and reformists in building the intellectual foundations of Arabism, communism, and Pan-Islamism. It will then examine the cultural impact of religious revival in the media as well as it pertains to debates on womanhood, piety, and agency and the role televangelists had in propagating for this revival. The course explores the question of embattled identities in the Middle East: from debates within Israel/Palestine about Druze identities and Mizrahi Jewish belonging. Students will also study the wide representations of Muslim-Christian relations in film - particularly in the Lebanese and Egyptian contexts as well as sectarian relations in the aftermath of the Iraq war. Finally, the course explores religion and religious identities during and after the Arab Spring and how religion impacted music and song in the region. In doing so, the students will have a nuanced, historically rooted, geographically and diverse understanding of religion and culture in the modern Middle East.
Student Learning Experience
The course will include one hour lecture and one-hour seminar and presentations by the students. The lecture will provide the students with a background understanding of the course readings. The one-hour seminar will include a 10 minute student presentation and a class seminar. Furthermore, the syllabus will include films, documentaries, music, and newspaper articles to consult. Students will be assessed on one class presentations and two essays - a mid-semester essay and a final semester essay.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | None |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2023/24, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 27 |
| Course Start |
Semester 1 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 22,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
172 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Presentation 20%
Mid-semester essay: 35%; 2000 words
Final essay: 45%; 2500 words |
| Feedback |
Students will have the opportunity to see me in office hours for official feedback general questions about upcoming assignments, sources and reading material. They will also be given the option to ask for feedback on essay plans. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Analyze religious formations of the culture, subjectivity, and intellectual thought
- Examine the theoretical and applied dimensions of lived religion in the Middle East
- Evaluate the religious diversity and interreligious debates in the Middle East
- Analyze the role of the media and literature in forming religious dialogue and debate
- Explain the political significance of religion and culture in times of crisis
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Reading List
Antoun, Richard (1998). Muslim Preacher in the Modern World: A Jordanian Case Study in Comparative Perspective. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Bates, Daniel and Amal Rassam (1983). Peoples and Cultures of the Middle East. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1983.
Eckelman, Dale (2001). The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Goodwin, Jan (2003). Muslim Women Lift the Veil of Silence on the Islamic World. Boston: Plume.
Lancaster & Lancaster (1987). 'The Function of Peripatetics in Rwala Bedouin Society' in Aparna Rao Peripatetic minorities in cross-cultural perspective. Koeln: Boehlau.
Layne, Linda (1994). Home and Homeland: The Dialogies of Tribal and National Identities in Jordan. New Jersey: Princeton.
Massad, Joseph (2001). Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan. New York: Columbia University Press.
Rose, Lesley (2005). 'A Palestinian Wedding' in Footnotes 89: 3-4.
Shunnaq, Mohammed (2009). 'Cross-Cultural Cyber-Marriages: A Post-Modern Socio-Economic Strategy (the Case of Jordanian Youth).' Social Identities: Journal for the Study of Race, Nation, and Culture 15,2: 169-186, Routledge.
Spradley, James and David W. McCurdy (2000). Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Storey, John (1998). An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. Athens, Georgia: The University of Georgia Press.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Students will develop a greater understanding of religion in a more embodied form.
Students will develop intercultural skills possible through a greater regional literacy.
Students will be more competitive in an international job market |
| Keywords | Middle East,Religion,Culture,Islam,Christianity,Judaism,Druze |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Walaa Quisay
Tel:
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Rachel Dutton
Tel: (0131 6)50 7227
Email: |
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