This course introduces students to Near Eastern societies and cultures over the last one thousand years. Students will explore the diverse cities and regions of the Near East and the equally diverse religious, ethnic, and ultimately national communities that populated them. Students will have the opportunity to study a variety of genres of sources from religious polemics to architecture, travelogues to hagiographies, philosophical treatises to imperial edicts, feminist critiques to nationalist and religious revivalist tracts, along with short stories, novels, and even graphic memoirs.
