Check out the Dubai trailer!

http://vimeo.com/31336588

• Explore the historical development of the African Diaspora in an Arab Society

• Examine Arab history and culture from the perspective of Afro-Arab women

• Study Dubai’s rise from being a pearling and fishing village to a global trading and tourism hub

• Learn documentary film-making

• Meet Emirati religious leader and Arab news editors and journalists

• Visit Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, one of the largest in the world

Course of Study

Fall Term 2012

Hist 280 Africans in the Arab World
This course offers a broad historical overview of African men’s and women’s existence as religious, political,and military leaders and as slaves and poets in select Arab societies from medieval times to the era of abolition; it also considers the distinct experience of men as eunuchs and women as concubines and wives. It also surveys the development of an African Diaspora in select Arab societies from ancient to modern times. While this community’s emergence preceded the rise of Islam, its growth has been largely linked to the movement of Africans as merchants, warriors, religious leaders, and as enslaved peoples across the Sahara Desert, up the Nile valley, and across the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. Highlighting communities in Morocco, Egypt, and the Sudan in North Africa to Iraq, the Saudi Arabia, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, this course looks at the diverse experiences of peoples whose dark skin came to be equated with slave status, yet who also became loyal followers of Islam in an Arab world.

Winter Term 2013

Hist 286 Africans in the Arab World: On Site and Revisited
This course is the second part of a two-term sequence beginning with Africans in the Arab World, HIST 280. The course begins with a two-week visit in December to Dubai, United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.). Fieldwork will include visits to museums, mosques, media outlets, and markets in the Emirates of Dubai, Abu Dhabi (the capital of the U.A.E.), Sharjah, and Fujairah; it also will include discussions of gender, race, and ethnicity in Islam, Arab media, and academic institutions with religious leaders, journalists, and artists, as well as with immigrants of African descent. In regular weekly meetings during the winter term on campus, data will be analyzed and presented in oral, written, and visual formats.

Note: Preference will be given to students to who have taken a course in either Women and Gender Studies, Cinema and Media Studies, or History.

Costs and Visa

Costs

You are responsible for the flight to Dubai, some food, and pocket money. All other expenses (hotel, local transportation, tours, and tickets to group activities) are covered. The program will include breakfast and a few group dinners.

Visa

No visa is required for American and European Union passport holders. Students carrying other passports should check with the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates for visa requirements.

For more Information Please contact the Office of Off-Campus Studies: Naomi Ziegler, nziegler@carleton.edu, x4031 or Thabiti
Willis, jcwillis@carleton.edu, x4207.