Readings & Films

[Qur'an] Suras pp. 6–16, (ajza' pp. 7–14).

Rasmussen, A. K. "The Qur'an in Indonesian Daily Life: The Public Project of Musical Oratory." Ethnomusicology 45, no. 1 (2001): 30–57.

Harris, R. "'The Oil is Sizzling in the Pot': Sound and Emotion in Uyghur Qur'anic Recitation." Ethnomusicology Forum 23, no. 3 (2014): 331–59.

Film

The Light in Her Eyes. Directed by Julia Meltzer and Laura Nix. Color, 87 min. 2011.

Koran by Heart. Directed by Greg Barker. Color, 90 min. 2011.

[Qur'an] Suras pp. 37–114 (ajza' pp. 23–30).

Half of class reads: Arabi, Ibn. Divine Sayings: 101 Hadith Qudsi - The Mishkat Al-Anwar of Ibn 'Arabi. Translated by Stephen Hirtenstein and Martin Nocutt. Anqa Publishing, 2008. ISBN: 9781905937035. [Preview with Google Books]

Half of class reads: An-Nawawi. The Complete Forty Hadith. 3rd ed. Edited by Abdassamad Clarke. Ta-Ha Publishers Limited, 2009. ISBN: 9781842001158.

No assignment.

In-class activity on al-Bukhari, Muslim, and al-Suyuti. Present project 1, final discussion of Qur'an and hadiths.

[Messick] Skim "Introduction." Chapters 1–2 and 4, pp. 15–53 and 75–99.

Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. "The Spiritual Message of Islamic Calligraphy." Chapter 2 in Islamic Art and Spirituality. State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 17–36. ISBN: 9780887061752. [Preview in Google Books]

Film

The Clay Bird. Directed by Tareque Masud. Color, 89 min. 2002.

[Messick] Chapters 7–9 and 11, pp. 135–87 and 203–31.

Vismann, C. "Preface" and "Law's Writing Lessons." In Files: Law and Media Technology. Edited by Geoffrey Winthrop-Young. Stanford University Press, 2008, pp. 1–38. ISBN: 9780804751513.

Battles, M. "The House of Wisdom." In Library: An Unquiet History. W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, pp. 56–81. ISBN: 9780393325645.

Self-guided trip to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.

[Rumi] Everyone read "Prose Introduction" and "Exordium: The Song of the Reed." The rest is to be divided up among class, choose 2–3 more sections / stories that look interesting, and present briefly on what you read.

Poetry of Hafez: choose 3–4 poems (ghazals or rubaiyat) and read carefully.

Films

Sufi Qawwali: A Call to the West. Documentary by Najib Aminy. 13 min. 2014.

Give Me Your Love: A Journey into Mevlevi Music. Documentary by Namerra Ahmed. 30 min. 2007.

Guest: Rich Nielsen

Miller, F. "Bin Laden's Genie and His Bottle: On Authority and Revelation through Audiotapes." Chapter 4 in The Audacious Ascetic: What the Bin Laden Tapes Reveal about Al-Qa'ida. Oxford University Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780190264369.

Blair, D., et al. "Osama Bin Laden Files: A Preoccupation with the Media, and a Bewildering Bureaucracy," The Telegraph, May 3, 2012.

Rose, S. "The ISIS Propaganda War: A Hi-tech Media Jihad," The Guardian, October 7, 2014.

Marshall, A. "How ISIS Got its Anthem," The Guardian, November 9, 2014.

Nielsen, R. A. "Networks, Careers, and the Jihadi Radicalization of Muslim Clerics." (PDF) July 1, 2014.

Said, Edward W. "Islam as News" and "Knowledge and Power." Chapters 1 and 3 in Covering Islam: How the Media and the Experts Determine How We See the Rest of the World. Vintage Books, 1996, pp. 2–79 and 162–73. ISBN: 9780099595014.

Plus one of the following (divided up in class):

• McLuhan, Marshall. "The Medium is the Message." In Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. MIT Press, 1994, pp. 1–21. ISBN: 9780262631594.
• Williams, Raymond. "From Medium to Social Practice." In Marxism and Literature. Oxford University Press, 1977, pp. 158–64. ISBN: 9780198760566. (also read pp. 145–57 as background)
• Mitchell, W. J. T. "Addressing Media." MediaTropes 1 (2008): 1–18.
• Luhmann, Niklas. The Reality of the Mass Media. Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 1–9 and 95–102. ISBN: 9780804740777.
• Siegert, Bernhard. "Cultural Techniques: Or the End of the Intellectual Postwar Era in German Media Theory." Theory, Culture and Society 30, no. 6 (2013): 48–65.