Sex, Love, and Desire in Arab Popular Culture

In this course we will challenge Western judgments about Arab sexuality and desire as inherently repressive. We will survey the permutations of desire -- from the sexual to the sacred, the heteroerotic to the homoerotic—in popular Arab culture. We will consider the intersections of gender, nation, race, ethnicity, ability, and sexuality in cinema, literature, and music. Through these mediums, we will examine the changing definitions of sexual respectability and sex work in different contexts, transsexuality and transgender identities, marriage, sexual revolutions and gender conflict, state regulation of sexuality, love for nation, and love in exile. This course will be taught entirely in Arabic. (ARBC 0302 or equivalent) 3 hrs. sem. AAL, ART, CMP, LNG, MDE