History 214: Sex in the Casbah: Sex, Gender & Islam

How have categories of sexuality and gender been defined, maintained, and/or contested in Muslim societies?  This course will highlight debates concerning sexuality and gender as they relate to prescribed gender roles, the role of transgender bodies and same sex intimacy, and the construction of the category of illicit sexuality in classical and modern Islamic thought. This close study of gender and sexuality begins in the early Islamic period with primary texts about the Prophet Muhammad and his female companions.  Gender roles and sexuality found in legal, medical, and sexual advice manuals will be studied.   Students will learn how modern veiling debates in both the Middle East and France have taken shape in light of the emergence of Arab feminism, Muslim women’s responses to Islamic conservatism, and immigration debates.  The course will address Orientalist representations of “Oriental sex” in art and literature and how Muslim women have critically responded to that tradition.  The format will be a combination of lecture and discussion. Materials for the course are scholarly monographs, articles, primary source documents, films, and art. Students will write a final research paper on a related topic of their choice. May be taken for credit toward the South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies major, the Gender Studies major or minor, or the Indigeneity, Race, and Ethnicity Studies major or minor.