America in Iraq

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

This course surveys cultural production in Iraq and the USA, across a number of mediums (poetry, song, film, journalism, memoir, fiction). This course will be conducted in English, and translations will be provided to any student. Interested students will be able to read Iraqi works in the original. The main focus of this course will be on American and Iraqi writers and artists as they responded to the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, with the aim of providing sufficient regional and historical background to appreciate the scope of the US invasion, its various meanings for Iraqis and Americans, and its consequences for both societies. Themes will include: embeddedness in journalism and literature; sectarianism and its critiques; the military-literary complex; combatant culture; exilic writing; the persistence of Orientalism.