ARAB 292
Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: Narratives from the Arab World, Latin America and the Caribbean
Last Offered Spring 2017
Division I Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Cross-listed COMP 292
This course is not offered in the current catalog

Class Details

This course offers a South-South comparative reading of revolutions and counter-revolutions in the second half of the 20th century in the Arab World, Latin America and the Caribbean. Focusing mostly on novels that depict histories of social movements, post-independence revolutions, indigenous autonomies, dictatorship, and counter-revolutions, our aim is to investigate narratives of people power vs. absolute power, insurgency vs. neocolonialism, utopias and dystopias. To familiarize students with an alternative, yet foundational, canon of modern Arabic, Latin American and Caribbean literatures, we will focus on novels from the post-Sixties generation in the Arab world and the post-Boom Latin American generation. Questions that we will ask: How do these novels configure narratives of the nation and its fragments? What can we learn about the rise and fall of Communist rebellions in Oman and Cuba? How memories of traumatic lives under dictatorship in Syria and Chile shaped the genre of the political novel? How did novels about the ‘revolution’ contribute to the rise of realist experimental literary movements Arabic and Latin American literatures? In addition to selected films and critical essays, the readings for this course may include novels by the following writers: Sahar Khalifeh, (Palestine), Sonallah, Ibrahim (Egypt), Dima Wannous (Syria), Sinan Antoon (Iraq), Zoé Valdés (Cuba), Subcomandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo III (México), Roberto Bolaño (Chile), and Luisa Valenzuela (Argentina).
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 19
Expected: 15
Class#: 3064
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active class participation, three short papers (3-5 pages), and a final 7- to 10-page expansion and rewrite
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis; not available for the fifth course option
Prerequisites: none
Distributions: Division I Writing Skills Exploring Diversity Initiative
Notes: meets Division 1 requirement if registration is under COMP; meets Division 2 requirement if registration is under ARAB
This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ARAB 292 Division I COMP 292 Division I

Class Grid

Updated 6:42 am

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