HUM 248 will introduce students to the multi-faceted literary and cultural production of a region that at one point stretched from the Iberian Peninsula to the Indus Valley, as well as give them an understanding of the historical shifts in power that took place across the Near East over the past millennium. Starting at the tail end of the Abbasid Empire up to the rise of nation-states in the 20th century, students will learn of the different power dynamics that shaped the region’s diverse ethnic, religious, linguistic and ultimately national communities and their worldviews.
