“When I offer it again—hopefully next spring—I would like to make room as well for popular literature, bringing in selections from 1001 Nights and passages from Remke Kruk’s The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature (2014).”Continue Reading

“Firstly, these are fun texts that capture a sense of marvel, wonder, humor, and, above all, adventure. In a university setting, both of these texts get at a fundamental human problem that I enjoy highlighting: How does one write about and represent cultures and peoples other than one’s own? What pitfalls await even a sympathetic observer?”Continue Reading