CMPL 235 - The Arabian Nights Beyond “East” and “West”

FC ARHU CD

4 credits
This course focuses on the cycle of tales known as the Arabian Nights and its various translations, rewritings, and adaptations (literary, visual, aural, and cinematic) from comparative, cross-cultural, and theoretical perspectives. In addition to the Nights , we will study its literary appropriations, and explore the visual, aural, and cinematic adaptations through the lens of critical theory by Benjamin, Said, Damrosch, Venuti, Schleiermacher, Jakobson, Warner, Nochlin, Irwin, Barthes, and Borges. Questions of cultural translation, representation, orientalism, discourses of difference, identity formation, and ethics will be inseparable from discussions of world literature, translation theory and practice, aesthetics, literary influence, and narrative technique. This course is accepted as a MENA minor course.