AMES3877: The Arab Renaissance: Narrating Modernity

The Nahḍa, a word meaning renaissance, awakening, or simply the act of standing up, is the name Arab writers and intellectuals of the 19th c. gave their own historical period. What does it mean to view oneself as living through a revival? How does this view shape the contours of the past, or of the future? This class will address these questions through a survey of the political, intellectual, social, and cultural aspects of Arab modernity. We will examine how Arab thinkers of the late 19th and early 20th century produced new genres, identities, and communal affiliations to narrate their experience of modernity, which they often coded as “the encounter with the West.” Our readings, all in English translation, will cover the first confrontations (and love affairs) with European powers, the self-professed urgency of projects of reforming language, literature, and cultural institutions, the growing schism between religious and secular thought, and the attempts to articulate indigenous alternatives to Western-style modernity.

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