Islam/Media

Readings & Films

Textbooks

Complete citations for the required and recommended texts are given on the Syllabus.

WEEKLY TOPICS	LEC #	ASSIGNED READINGS & FILM SCREENINGS
Week 1. Introduction: A Media Archaeology of Islam	1	Prior to first course meeting, please read the following (about pp. 20): [Qur’an] Suras pp. 1, 96, 68, and 73–74. Sahih al-Bukhari hadith collection, 1.1–5. Zielinski, S. “Introduction: The Idea of a Deep Time of Media.” Chapter 1 in Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means. MIT Press, 2008. ISBN: 9780262740326.
Part I: First Media
Week 2. The Qur’an: Message and Medium, I	2	[Qur’an] Suras pp. 78–114; 1–5 (ajza’ 30, pp. 1–6). Sells, M. A. Approaching the Qur’an: The Early Revelations. 2nd ed. White Cloud Press, 2007, pp. 1–31. ISBN: 9781883991692. Haleem, M. A. S. “Introduction.” In The Qur’an. Translated by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem. Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780199570713. [From his translated edition]
	3	Guest: Laura Marks [Marks] pp. 1–67.
Week 3. The Qur’an: Message and Medium, II	4	[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.
	5	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.
Week 4. Message and Messenger	6	[Qur’an] Suras pp. 17–36 (ajza’ pp. 15–22). Ishaq, Ibn. “The Early Life of the Apostle of Allah” and “The Revelation.” In The Life of Muhammad: Apostle of Allah. Translated by Edward Rehatsek. The Folio Society, 1964, pp. 17–67.
	7	No assignment. Workshop Introduction to media production, including basic film / sound recording; if time allows, also sound and video editing.
Week 5. Memory Transmission: Sunnah and Hadith	8	[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.
	9	No assignment. In-class activity on al-Bukhari, Muslim, and al-Suyuti. Present project 1, final discussion of Qur’an and hadiths.
Part II: Sensory Islam as Audiovision
Week 6. Visual Islam: Writing	10	[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]
	11	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.
Week 7. Visual Islam: Art and Architecture	12	Guest: Azra Akšamija [Marks] pp. 153–318. Akšamija, Azra. “Nomadic Mosque: Wearable Prayer Space for Contemporary Islamic Practice in the West.” Thresholds 32 (2005): 17–21. ———. “Cultivating Convergences: The First Islamic Cemetery in Vorarlberg, Austria.” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 3, no. 1 (2014): 131–46.
	13	Trip to Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. “The Principle of Unity and the Sacred Architecture of Islam.” Chapter 3 in Islamic Art and Spirituality. State University of New York Press, 1987, pp. 37–63. ISBN: 9780887061752. [Preview in Google Books] Video Aga Kahn Architecture Award. “2013 Aga Khan Award for Architecture Winner - Altach Islamic Cemetery, Altach, Austria.” YouTube. Oct. 7, 2013.
Week 8. Visual Islam: Museums, Archives	No class meeting	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.
Week 9. Aural Islam: Poetry and Soundscapes	14	Film New Muslim Cool. Documentary by Jennifer Maytorena Taylor. Color, 83 min. 2009. Mohaiemen, Naeem. “Fear of a Muslim Planet: The Islamic Roots of Hip-Hop.” 2008. Sanghani, R. “Hip Hop Hijabis: Meet the Muslim Women Who Rap in Headscarves,” The Telegraph. March 11, 2015.
	15	[Hirschkind] Chapters 1 and 3–4, pp. 1–31 and 67–142; Skim Chapter 2. Kittler, F. A. “The City is a Medium.” New Literary History 27, no. 4 (1996): 717–29.
Part III: Networked Islams
Week 10. Pilgrimage, Travel, and Gender	16	Peters, F. Chapters 2, 3, and 6 in The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places. Princeton University Press, 1995, pp. 60–143 and 266–316. ISBN: 9780691026190. Sharif, Al Khalifa. “Sacred Narratives Linking Iraqi Shiite Women across Time and Space.” In Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip-Hop. The University of Carolina Press, 2005, pp. 132–54. ISBN: 9780807855881. [Preview with Google Books] Amin, Betty Hasan. “Hajj in a Wheelchair.” Azizah Magazine 1, no. 1 (2001): 39–43.
	17	YaShaheed. “Walk to Karbala, Ziyara of Imam Hussain, Arbaeen.” YouTube, Dec. 28, 2011. View other short films about the hajj Explore “virtual” hajj, such as IslamOnline.net / Second Life and the Mecca 3D app
Week 11. Jihadist Circulations	18	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.
Week 12. Muslim Media I: Protest	19	Kurzman. “The Network Metaphor and the Mosque Network in Iran, 1978–1979.” In Muslim Networks from Hajj to Hip-Hop. The University of Carolina Press, 2005, pp. 69–83. ISBN: 9780807855881. [Preview with Google Books] Sardar, Z. “Paper, Printing and Compact Discs: The Making and Unmaking of Islamic Culture.” Media, Culture and Society 15, no. 1 (1993): 43–59. Srebermy and Khiabany. “Gender, Sexuality and Blogging.” In Blogistan: The Internet and Politics in Iran. I. B. Tauris, 2010, pp. 87–132. ISBN: 9781845116071. [Preview with Google Books]
	20	Film Persepolis. Directed by Marjane Satrapi. Color, 96 min. 2007.
Week 13. Muslim Media II: Islam in the Media	21	No assignments. “Work-in-progress” project presentations in class.
	22	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.
Week 14. Conclusion: Islam as Discourse Network?	23	Asad, T. “The Idea of an Anthropology of Islam.” Qui Parle 17, no. 2 (2009): 1–30. Kittler, F. A. “The Mother’s Mouth.” In Discourse Network 1800 / 1900. Stanford University Press, 1992. pp. 25–70. ISBN: 9780804720991. [Preview with Google Books] Zielinski, S., and E. Fürlus. “Introduction: Ex Oriente Lux.” In Variantology. Vol. IV. Walther König, Köln, 2011, pp. 7–18. ISBN: 9783865607324.
	24	No assignments. Final projects open house & exhibition.