COMP 234
Saharan Imaginations Spring 2025
Division I W Writing Skills D Difference, Power, and Equity
Cross-listed ARAB 209 / ENVI 208

Class Details

Deconstructing reductive Saharanism, which the course conceptualizes as a universalizing discourse about deserts, this course seeks to critically examine the myriad assumptions that are projected upon deserts across times and cultures. In addition to their depiction as dead and empty, deserts have become a canvas for the demonstration of religiosity, resilience, heroism and athleticism. Cultural production, particularly literature and film, do, however, furnish a critical space in which important questions can be raised about deserts’ fundamental importance to different cultures and societies. Drawing on novels, films, and secondary scholarship, the course will help students understand how myth, memory, history, coloniality/postcoloniality, and a strong sense of ethics are deeply intertwined in the desert sub-genre of African, Euro-American, and Middle Eastern literatures. Whether grappling with transcontinental issues of climate change, cannibalization of biodiversity or overexploitation of natural resources, desert-focused cultural production invites us to interrogate the politics of space and place as well as mobility and spatial control as they relate to this supposedly dead nature.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 14
Expected: 14
Class#: 3289
Grading: no pass/fail option, no fifth course option
Requirements/Evaluation: active participation, short presentation, short weekly responses on GLOW, midterm exam, and final paper
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: If the course is over-enrolled, students will required to provide a 200-word paragraph in which they explain how the course fits within their plan of study at Williams.
Distributions: Divison I Writing Skills Difference, Power, and Equity
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ARAB 209 Division I COMP 234 Division I ENVI 208 Division I
WS Notes: Students will receive constant and extensive feedback on their written work. Students will write regular weekly responses on Glow, a reflection statement, two 5pp. papers for midterms, and one 10pp. final paper.
DPE Notes: Students will gain critical awareness of the imbrication of power, hegemony, economic injustice, and colonial policies in the disruption of indigenous conceptions of the Saharan space. Students will also be able to question representations of the Sahara as a dead or empty space by engaging with locally produced alternative conceptualizations of place. Finally, students will produce written assignments that address issues of power and environmental discrimination.
Attributes: ENVI Humanities, Arts + Social Science Electives

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  • COMP 234 - 01 (S) SEM Saharan Imaginations
    COMP 234 - 01 (S) SEM Saharan Imaginations
    Division I W Writing Skills D Difference, Power, and Equity
    Cancelled
    3289
    Cancelled

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