CMLT 300 3 - Cinemas of the Middle East

This course examines Middle Eastern cinema from the early twentieth century to the present day. As a comparative literature course with a focus on the textual medium of film, “Cinemas of the Middle East” takes up questions of representation, translation, cultural identity, multilingualism, cosmopolitanism, trauma, and dissidence. The course is structured around several historical moments that reshaped the geopolitical and cultural landscape of the Middle East. We will start with a unit on Egyptian film and examine the notion of Egypt as the “Hollywood of the Middle East.” We will then move through a unit on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and look at the ways in which 1948 is portrayed alternately as the birth of the Israeli nation and the catastrophic start of the Palestinian refugee crisis. Subsequent units examine cinematic treatments of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and its aftermaths, the decline of cosmopolitanism, Mizrahi cinema and identity politics in Israel, the Lebanese civil war and trauma narratives, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and responses to censorship, transnational productions, and new filmic techniques that reflect the aesthetics and modes of communication of the digital age. (Group III) (Diversity, Writing Option)