Middle East Politics and Literature

Catalog description

Contemporary Iran, Egypt, and Turkey are often described as "enigmatic" or "too complex." However, the enigma stems, in part, from lack of access to unmediated sources of knowledge about the region. This course is meant to delve into the great works of a few of the leading Iranian, Egyptian, and Turkish contemporary literary figures. Rather than using the commentary of experts or accounts provided by observers, we will glean the political events, as well as the hopes and disillusionments, triumphs, and failures of the respective nations from the original narratives of their literature. We will make observations and examinations through the dramatic conflicts as portrayed in prose and poetry on the two axes of tensions with which these countries have been struggling for over 100 years: misogyny versus egalitarianism, and religious identity versus secular aspirations. The texts will include selected passages from English translations of the poetry of Nima Youshij, the father of modern Persian poetry, and Forough Farrokhzad, Iran's foremost Persian female poet of the 20th century, and works of prose by Ibrahim Golestan, and the works the great Egyptian prose writers, Taha Hussein and Naguib Mahfouz, as well as the works of the renown Turkish writers Adalet Agaoglu, Yasar Kemal, and Nâzim Hikmet.