EMAIL: ycmes@ycmes.org
TEL: 00967 1 270 200
FAX: 00967 1 270 127
P.O. Box 3671
Sana’a – Republic of Yemen
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2008-2009 Class Schedule
The full PCMES class schedules for the 2008-2009 academic year will be updated periodically. All levels of Arabic are offered each semester, coupled with 4-6 content courses.
Course descriptions for Arabic Language can be found online in the course catalogue.
Credit is transferred to a home university, generally under pre-approval, through a YCMES transcript. Classes are held on the credit-system, with each course meeting four hours a week for a fourteen-week semester (each course is given a weight of four course credits).
Check back soon for complete class listings...
Fall 2008
ANTH: Political Anthropology of the Middle East. Full Description Soon.
Instructor: Dr. Laurent Bonnefoy
ARAB101: Elementary Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 102: Upper Elementary Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 203: Intermediate Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 204: Upper Intermediate Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 305: Advanced Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 306: Upper Advanced Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 390: Yemeni Colloquial Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
POL 201: Contemporary Politics of the Middle East. An overview of the different state forms currently in place in the Middle East as well as the politics and ideology of parties, elections, and parliaments. Opposition movements, including Islamic ones, will be considered.
Instructor: Dr. Ahmed Saif Bio; Dr. Saif's CV
Winter Session 2009 - Click here for more information
ARTS 241: Islamic Architecture and Urbanism in Yemen
This course will examine major monuments of architecture in their urban context dating from the rise of Islam through the twentieth century. While the class will focus on historic monuments, a range of contemporary issues will be explored, including the shaping role that recent reconstruction and renovation plays in modern urban landscapes, the iconic use of monuments as political tools, the ways that current inhabitants and users transform historic monuments for contemporary purposes and the impact of tourism on traditional cities. The course will consider both public and domestic structures, as well as cities and their urban fabric, and in a few cases works of art and material culture.
Instructor: Dr. Nancy Um
Spring 2009
ARAB101: Elementary Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 102: Upper Elementary Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 203: Intermediate Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 204: Upper Intermediate Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 305: Advanced Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 306: Upper Advanced Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
ARAB 390: Yemeni Colloquial Arabic.
Instructor: YLC Staff
LIT 303: Autobiography in the Middle East
(focusing on the Arab world but including some Turkish and Iranian works)
Neither truth nor fiction, autobiography is an experiment in rendering the reality of individual lives. The decision to write one’s life is political, a perception that one’s experiences are important and of heuristic value to others. The life is important either because it is exceptional (Shirin Ebadi as the first Muslim woman Nobel laureate) or because it is representative and thus allows others to understand their world and its problems through the lens of this emblematic tale. Writing about the recent explosion in Muslim women’s autobiographies, Gillian Whitlock writes: “Life writing has played a major role in the global commodification of cultural differences that has been a boom industry in the recent past” (Whitlock 2007, 54). The numerous stories women tell of suffering behind the veil, some genuine others concocted for political purposes, lead Whitlock to characterize autobiography as a “soft weapon” because it is “easily co-opted into propaganda” (3, 105). But life narratives are also vitally important because they can humanize and make relevant cultures that risk reduction to stereotype. Life writing challenges the erasure of subaltern pasts. This course will include Iranian and Arab autobiographies by Shirin Ebadi, Taha Hussein, Nawal El Saadawi, Assia Djebar, Edward Said, and Riverbend among others.
Instructor: Dr. miriam cooke
Islamic Feminisms: Full Description soon.
Instructor: Dr. miriam cooke
POL 343: Constitutional, Legislative and Democratic Developments in the Arab Gulf Countries.
This course aims to introduce students to several basic issues in the politics of the modern and contemporary Arab Gulf in the twentieth and twenty first centuries, providing first a historical background, and then approaching a series of constitutional and legislative issues such as the constitutions, national assemblies, the relations with other state’s powers and the surrounding environment that comprises ‘Political Islam’, the social structure and stratification, the issue of democracy and democratisation in the Gulf, and finally deals with pressing aspects of contemporary politics in the Gulf. This course provides an introduction not only to the historical-political background of regional politics, but also to major theoretical perspectives on the nature and significance of the region’s politics from different disciplines.
Instructor: Dr. Ahmed Saif Bio; Dr. Saif's CV
REL 211: Introduction to Islamic Civilization: The Modern Muslim World
How do we begin to grasp modern developments and global features of the Muslim world? In this course we will use a variety of pedagogic tools. One will be summary overviews, of which both Waldman and Hodgson are indispensable for the entire semester. Another is contemporary novels, of which two, one by the Lebanese chronicler, Amin Maalouf, the other by the Algerian feminist, Assia Djebar, will be read and discussed in Spring 2009. Still another is films, and there will be at least two videos shown either in whole or in part during different class sessions. A final device will be the analysis of the modern Muslim world by looking at the most familiar, though unjustified, trope: violence, and for that task I will use my own monograph, Shattering the Myth: Islam Beyond Violence.
Instructor: Dr. Bruce Lawrence
REL 311: Religious Minorities - Muslim & non-Muslim
Defining religious minorities is difficult. Does it include sectarian as well as ethnic or juridical minorities? How are Muslim minorities distinguishable from other minorities, not only within but also beyond the familiar Asian-African communities labeled 'Muslim'? In this seminar we will address these tough, category defining questions, but also look at how they socio-political prejudgments or policies, especially in the shaping of Muslim minority issues both historically and contemporaneously.
Instructor: Dr. Bruce Lawrence