Course Number: 2201481 Semester: Spring 2010 Time of Class

I am available for consultation during scheduled office hours and by appointment. Do not hesitate to make an appointment. If you are having any difficulties at all, see me; don’t wait until it is too late to improve the situation. My office is located in the English Department at the Faculty of Arts.

This course will explore a range of texts by contemporary Arab women writers from across the Arab world, Arabophone, in English translation, and Anglophone, within a transcultural framework, understood in their literary, cultural, socio-economic, and historical contexts. Central to this course will be the treatment and unveiling of a number of important issues: the socio-cultural construction of femininity and masculinity, the meanings and practices of hegemonic masculinity, sexual objectification and commodification, and the politics and social / economic dynamics of gender relations and gendering in the vast Arab world. Required writers include, among many others, Alifa Rifaat (Egyptian), Ahdaf Soueif (Arab European), Samira Azzam (Palestinian), Hanan Al-Shaikh (Lebanese), and Daisy Al-Amir (Iraqi); and recent critical theoretical inquiries into gender identities, sexual politics, and strategies of Arab and American feminisms.

1. 
   To introduce students to a variety of fictional works by Arab female writers
   
2. 
   To examine the particular constraints that women--and women writers in particular--were subject to
   
3. 
   To examine myths and realities of women’s experiences across various socioeconomic and cultural groupings
   
4. 
   To focus on women in relation to themselves, to others, to institutions, and to society
   
5. 
   To use critical thinking skills from both theoretical and practical perspectives, thus merging theory and practice
   
6. 
   To compare the similarities and differences between male and female experiences
   
7. 
   To develop critical awareness of feminist issues in literature
   

1. 
   Lectures on the development of Arab feminist writing
   
2. 
   Group discussion of critical ideas or of significant literary texts
   

Separates Them”

1. 
   Badran, Margot, and Miriam Cooke, eds. Opening the Gates: A Century of Arab Feminist Writing. London: Virago Press, 1990.
   
2. 
   Shaaban, Bouthaina. Voices Revealed: Arab Women Novelists, 1898-2000. Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009.
   
3. 
   Aghacy, Samira. Masculine Identity in the Fiction of the Arab East since 1967. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse UP, 2009.
   
4. 
   Roded, Ruth, ed. Women in Islam and the Middle East: A Reader. London: I. B. Tauris, 1999. Revised Edition
   
5. 
   Ahmed, Leila. Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate. New Have: Yale UP, 1992.
   
6. 
   Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. Woman’s Body, Woman’s Word: Gender and Discourse in Arabo-Islamic Writing. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
   
7. 
   Accad, Evelyne. Sexuality and War: Literary Masks of the Middle East. New York: New York UP, 1990.
   
8. 
   ---. Veil of Shame: The Role of Women in the Contemporary Fiction of North Africa and the Arab World. Sherbrooke: Editions Naaman de Sherbrooke, 1978.
   
9. 
   Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock, and Basima Qattan Bezirgan, eds. Middle Eastern Muslim Women Speak. Austin: U of Texas P, 1977.
   
10. 
    Shaaban, Bouthaina. Both Right and Left Handed: Arab Women Talk About Their Lives. London: The Women’s Press, 1988.
    
11. 
    Brooks, Geraldine. Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women. New York: Random House, 1995.
    
12. 
    Said, Edward. The Edward Said Reader. Ed. Moustafa Bayoumi and Andrew Rubin. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.
    
13. 
    Mernissi, Fatima. Beyond the Veil. Male-Female Dynamics in Modern Muslim Society. Revised edition. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1987.