Major and Minor

Elementary Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic, MSA), is designed for students with no previous exposure to the language. There is a focus on gaining a strong foundation in the communicative skills of listening and speaking, as well as reading and writing. While the concentration is on Classical Arabic, there will be exposure to dialect through proverbs and music. Student participation and group activities encouraging conversation are vital to the course.

Accelerated Persian for Arabic Speakers is a one semester course for students who have already completed ARB 101. Because the Persian and Arabic languages share the same alphabet, students will be introduced to the few additional letters present in Persian, quickly followed by sentence structure, verb conjugation, and vocabulary building. 

By subtly deconstructing regime narratives, Syrian political parodies have played a vital role in undermining the Asad regime while operating within the framework of government co-optation. In this course, we will examine televised theatrical productions of plays, and multi-sketch comedies, and discuss the role of political parodies during an uprising, and the role of the artist in general when it comes to revolution.