Islam, the Uncanny

Catalog description

The awkward phrasing of the title of this course is deliberate, for in it we will be attempting to understand the universal category of "the uncanny" through the prism of Islam as it has been perceived through the lens of the West (the assumption being that Islam has had a sort of doppelgänger effect within the Western imagination). This will require us to read works of theory (of course Freud, but also Barthes and others) as well as works of art and philosophy across Western and Muslim cultures in which Islam makes an important appearance. In a sense, this is a course on "Islam and the West" or "Orientalism," yet it diverges in proposing a framing which opposes itself to the narrow ideological confines of this secular language, a language which has dominated (and precluded proper) reflection on the matter thus far. Undergraduates register for 200-level for 5 units. Graduate students register for 300-level for 3-5 units.