This course takes a close look at a diverse range of image creation in literature and film made in and about different divisions of “the Middle East,” focusing on Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Morocco, Palestine and Turkey as a way to understand different individual experiences and group identities in geopolitical context. Thematic focus will include concerns of gender, ethnic minorities, modern nation formation, religious (mis- )understanding and greater inequality in different political realms. In addition to providing an overview of some of the aesthetic accomplishments, influences and issues in the Middle East in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, readings, viewings and discussions will combine to help in investigating impressions and generating insights through convergent and sometimes conflictual political histories, with special attention to some of the effects of late modern colonialism and imperialism in the region and beyond.

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