Getting Comfortable

Episode 14: Getting Comfortable Takeaways

Join us in our final episode where Amanda talks to each production team about their takeaways from the project and course. Love and Geese!

Episode 13: Either/Or, Neither/Nor, America/Amreeka

Join Amanda and Cat as they discuss the origins of the Arabic word for America, Amreeka. They wrap up the course's content by engaging with Hamid Dabashi's argument on breaking binaries. The episode connects earlier readings and Dabashi's conclusion that there isn't an "East" nor a "West" after all. The works referenced in the episode include Alia Malek's A Country Called Amreeka: U.S. History Retold Through Arab-American Lives (New York: Free Press, 2009) and Hamid Dabashi's "Breaking the Binary," and "But There is Neither East nor West," in Being a Muslim in the World (Palgrave Pivot, 2013).

Episode 12: Hajj Narratives and Early Muslim Voices

Join Raisya and Isabella in a discussion about the meaning of the Hajj. They engage with a variety of voices starting off with Omar Ibn Said, an enslaved Muslim scholar, who penned an early 19th century memoir. Another voice is that of Malcolm X and his Hajj experience in the 1960s. The episode ends with a discussion of the documentary Sacred Journeys. The works referenced in the episode include Omar Ibn Said's A Muslim American Slave: The Life of Omar Ibn Said (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011); Dawn-Marie Gibson's The Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, and the Men Who Follow Him (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); ⁠“Mecca”⁠⁠ in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Ballantine Books, 2015); and Craig Clements's 2016 Sacred Journeys, The Hajj (2020).

Episode 11: Aida, Verdi, and Colonial Legacy

Join Amanda and Cat as they explore Giuseppe Verdi's grand 19th century opera, Aida, through the lens of three different analytical texts. Each author examines the opera through a different perspective, from the music and the libretto to the greater context behind the writing of Aida in 1870, which was first performed in 1871 for the opening of the Cairo Opera House. The works referenced in the episode include Edward Said's “The Empire at Work: Verdi’s Aida” in Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage Books, 1993); Paul Robinson's “Is Aida an Orientalist Opera?” in Opera, Sex, and Other Vital Matters (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002); and Christopher R. Gauthier and Jennifer McFarlane-Harris's “Nationalism, Racial Difference, and ‘Egyptian’ Meaning in Verdi’s Aida,” in Blackness in Opera, Naomi André, Karen M. Bryan, and Eric Saylor, eds. (University of Illinois Press, 2012).

Episode 10: The Ottoman Mehter, Harem-Escape Literature and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Join Matt and Sierra as they provide a brief engagement with the complicated relationship between Mozart’s opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and the opera’s connection to the Ottoman military marching band mehter. The works referenced in the episode include Eve R. Meyer's “The Image of the Turk in European Performing Arts” in Süleyman the Second and his Time, Halil İnalcık and Cemal Kafadar, eds. (ISIS Press, 1993); Herbert Lindenberger's "On opera and society (assuming a relationship)" in Situating Opera: Period, Genre, Reception (Cambridge Studies in Opera) (Cambridge University Press, 2010); Libretto: The Abduction from the Seraglio, Music by W.A. Mozart, Original text by C.F. Bretzner, English version, John W. Bloch (G. Schirmer, 1962); and Larry Wolff's “Osmin in Vienna: Mozart’s Abduction and the Centennial of the Ottoman Siege” in The Singing Turk (Stanford University Press, 2016).