| Credits | 1 |
| Restrictions | No 2027 2026 Instr perm req during Drop/Add |
| Pre-Requisites | Students may not take more than 1 CORE Communities course |
| Co-Requisites | |
| Core Area | Communities |
| Area of Inquiry | |
| Liberal Arts Practices |
Provides a general analysis of contemporary Arab communities and cultures across local, national, and global contexts. It is a highly selective study of the trends and forces—geographical, economic, political, and ideological—that shaped the formation of these communities in the places that today we call the Middle East and North Africa (and their diasporas). Students encounter the rich and complex mosaic that forms the basis for Arab unity, disunity, and identity by exploring the many ways in which Arabs understand, critique, contribute to, and transmit their cultures through generational change, migration, and political participation. Topics include history, religions, politics, languages, cultures, and social dynamics. Given the wide scale and scope of the class, coursework focuses on strategies of analysis—methods for reading, seeing, questioning, and interpreting materials from and about Arabs. Students also learn to assess their assumptions about Arabs, Arab Muslims, Arab Christians and Arab Jews, and to think critically about cultural representations in media and political discourse.