- Leisure, Pleasure, and Fun in the Middle East

Catalog description

A multidimensional exploration of how men and women of the Middle East developed new notions of time, carved out larger spaces for themselves in the expanding public sphere, created novel activities, and experimented with different mood- and mind-molding substances during the early modern and modern periods. Through close readings of secondary and primary sources (including photographs, films, novels, and memoirs), students will examine a number of topics related to leisure, pleasure, and fun in different urban centers of the Middle East, such as gender, and sexuality, drugs, tobacco, alcohol, places of pleasure, prostitution, cinema, photography, entertainment, and consumption.