Department of English

The Arabian Nights is a compilation of some of the most famous stories from the Middle East including Aladdin and the magic lamp, Sinbad the sailor, and Ali Baba and the forty thieves. While the Arabian Nights exists as a quintessential part of North American and European imaginations of the Middle East, this class aims to collectively trace how these imaginations were created and informed by the circulation of the Arabian Nights across space, time, and language. We will then examine how these imaginations are transformed as the Anglophone world undergoes various political and historical shifts, and what marks these mutable imaginations have left on our current perceptions of the Middle East. To do so, we will first gain familiarity with the tales of the Arabian Nights through intimate and thoughtful reading of Yasmine Seale’s translation of the text. We will then compare various English translations of this text, beginning with the very first introduction of the Arabian Nights to European audiences in 1704 by Antoine Galland. The latter half of the class will introduce students to theories of Orientalism which we will employ in analyzing spinoffs and revivals of the Arabian Nights’ tales from the eighteenth century to the present.