Retro Readings: Quran

magnifying glass hovering over pages of the Quran

QURAN/HNRC 301V-001
 THURSDAYS, 5-6:15 p.m., SPRING 2019
 GEAR 243

Students: here is the Retro Readings application form. The deadline to apply is 11:59 p.m. Thursday, October 25, 2018.

The Quran is a central Islamic religious and cultural artifact, and should be studied in its historical context as well as for how it has engendered a wide range of thought and practice. Students will glimpse an array of Sunni and Shia as well as Sufi approaches to the Quran, along with modern feminist and LGBTQ approaches to the text. With this in mind, students in this course will explore a wide variety of academic perspectives on the Quran, drawing from myriad subjects including religious studies, rhetorical analysis, gender studies and translation. This religious text offers a rich foundational platform from which to study traditional Islamic views and their influence on both historical and contemporary Muslim devotional practices. Students will examine the Quran as scholars, examining revisionist as well as traditional views about its genesis, exploring its treatment of Biblical figures, and comparing different translations of the work.  The course will focus on a range of literary and cultural approaches to the text, including: 

  • Structure, literary style, imagery and rhetorical strategies of the text itself
  • Gender and women’s studies
  • Translation studies
  • Orientalism and postcolonialism

This Retro Readings course will allow students to garner a deep scholarly understanding of many of the current and classical interpretative debates about the Quran, as they compare and cross-reference different critical academic views on the holy book of the Islamic faith.

What's in it for you:

  • Engage with religious texts in an informed, academic learning environment
  • Enrich your understanding of Islamic faith, history and culture
  • Inform your study with the works of leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines

What's expected of you:

  • Active, thoughtful participation in class discussions and projects
  • Open-minded engagement with assigned texts 

About Mohja Kahf:

woman in beret looks at camera before black backgroundMohja Kahf (Ph.D., Rutgers, 1994) is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman, the novel The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf and poetry books E-mails from Scheherazad and Hagar Poems.  Since 1994, she has introduced new courses at UA such as Arab Women Writers, The Quran as Literature, Arab American Literature, and Literature of Spain from 711 to 1615.  She was born in Syria and is a member of the Syrian Nonviolence Movement. She was honored in 2018 by the NWA Black Democratic Caucus for Lifetime Achievement in Inclusion in Education.