Love in its myriad manifestations constitutes a central and perennial theme in the literary and artistic repertoires of Arabic- and Persian-speaking societies. This course explores the varied, subtle vocabulary and the versatile, multivalent imagery linked with the themes of love and longing in Arabic- and Persian-language literature and film. In different times and places, how have men and women writers and directors used the themes of love and longing to depict and critique concepts of gender and gender relations, and social and political inequalities? How have men and women writers and filmmakers in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries both continued and disrupted earlier literary and poetic discourses of love? How have modern filmmakers engaged with and reworked classical stories of transgressive love? Divided roughly equally between literary and cinematic works, the course explores treatments of love and longing in, for example, early Arabic poetry and the Quranic text, philosophical and medical treatises, narrative cycles (for example the Thousand and One Nights), epic (notably the Persian Shahnameh or ‘Book of Kings’), lyric poetry (Rumi, Saadi, Hafez), modern verse, and film, including films by Dariush Mehrjui, Youssef Chahine, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Abbas Kiarostami, Rakhshan Bani-Etamad and Shirin Neshat.

Units: 1

Max Enrollment: 18

Crosslisted Courses:

Prerequisites: At least one course in Religion or Middle Eastern Studies, or permission of the instructor. Not open to students who have taken MES 271/REL 271.

Instructor: Marlow

Distribution Requirements: REP - Religion, Ethics, and Moral Philosophy

Typical Periods Offered: Every other year

Semesters Offered this Academic Year: Not Offered

Notes: This course is also taught at the 200-level as MES 271/REL 271.