LCST 222 HEADLEY MINI-COURSE (April 13-24, 2009)

Walter G. Andrews

Course Title: Ottoman Love and Today’s World.

Course Description: This first-time-ever course will combine an intimate glimpse into the cultural and literary history of the last great Muslim empire and its modern descendant with an introduction to the basic problem that some thoughtful scientists consider the greatest danger faced by human beings in today’s world. We will examine a grab-bag of seemingly unrelated notions beginning with “the basic problem” and extending to the “big gap”, “killing the cats”, Ottoman love (sex, and eroticism), terrorism, fundamentalism, suicide bombing, politics, Islam, Sufism, religion, “why science alone can’t save the world”, the role of the humanities (and the sciences) in a new millennium and a new century, “what needs to be done”... In the end, I hope (and expect) that we will see why and how all of these notions (and others...music, for example, and sports) belong together; that we will go from being simply scared (which often means being frightened into denial and indifference) to being wary and alert but also hopeful, engaged, and ready to confront “the basic problem” and the dangers that confront us with “humility and exuberance”. We will need to examine a few, short, provocative readings, sit still for a little bit of lecturing, and do a lot of thinking and talking about how what we read and hear and discuss in the class relates to what we are doing in the rest of our studies and the rest of our lives. This is a class that invites participation by students in any discipline (not just humanities and cultural studies) and will, in fact, be interesting in direct proportion to the number of different perspectives represented in the class. It requires no prior knowledge of Ottomans, Turks, or the Middle East.