Arabian Nights Global South

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

This course will explore the rich heritage and widespread influence of the Arabian Nights in the Global South. While traditionally, people have focused on the Nights’ impact on Western literature, this course will emphasize the vital role this extraordinary collection has played in the literatures of Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the modern Arabic world. This course will examine how the Global South engages with the Arabian Nights, not to focus on the language's complexities but to show how writers from the Global South created a counter-narrative that critiques colonialism and exploitation while revealing the cultural identity that the West diminished. These authors reimagined the Nights’ stories to incorporate their own folklore and highlight their cultural backgrounds. Authors from the Global South reimagined stories to forge a new form of magical realism, especially in Latin America, through the innovative works of Jorge Luis Borges, Paulo Coelho, Gabriel García Márquez, and Isabel Allende, among others. In India, writers like Salman Rushdie and Gihta Hariharan reinterpreted the "Nights" within Indian tradition and style. Finally, the Arab world, with Naguib Mahfouz and Elias Khoury, produced even more imaginative novels that blend harsh reality with the most fantastical realms.