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Introduction

BA Degree Programme

MA Degree Programme

PhD Degree Programme

BAD Degree Programme

BAD Curriculum

Course Description

ARAB101 Language Skills (2 credit-hours)

This course helps students develop basic language skills. It helps them improve their pronunciation, writing, and reading comprehension. The course material comes from received Arabic to make sure that students learn correct Arabic.

ARAB 103 Arabic Basic Writing (2 credit-hours)

The course helps students develop basic writing skills. Through exercises they can improve their mastery of spelling and sentence structure problems.

ARAB 104 Literary Studies (3 credit-hours)

This course offers a survey of the basic theories of literature, such as the relation between literature and society, art, myth, and history.

ARAB 105 Language Studies (3 credit-hours)

This is a basic language skills course. It introduces students to the basics of Arabic noun and verb. It also helps students understand the structure of the Arabic sentence.

ARAB 106 Arabic Basic Writing Skills (3 credit-hours)

This course helps students improve their writing skills. They get to know all the rules of writing, such as vowels, end-cases and punctuation. It also offers them all the practice they need to improve the speed and quality of their handwriting.

ARAB 107 Reading Skills (3 credit-hours)

This course helps students improve on their reading skills. They get to practice what they learned so far of grammar in their reading. Also the course pays special attention for students' reading comprehension and their knowledge of the Arabic and Islamic culture.

ARAB 111 Pre-Islamic Literature I (3 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to the civilization and culture of the pre-Islamic era. It also studies the technical and artistic aspects of its dominant literary genre, poetry, and looks into the various elements of its milieu.

ARAB 112 Pre-Islamic Literature II (2 credit-hours)

This course provides a detailed study of one pre-Islamic poet. It also names the various types of pre-Islamic prose.

ARAB 121 Stylistic (3 credit-hours)

This course is an introduction to stylistics. It names its elements and describes its relationship with linguistics, rhetoric and literary criticism.

ARAB 131 Grammar I (3 credit-hours)

This is a grammar introductory course. It describes the general structure of Arabic sentence, and discusses its essential components. Through exercises, the course helps students improve their grasp of Arabic grammatical concepts.

ARAB 145 General Linguistics (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to linguistics and explains its general theories and subjects. They learn basic concepts in phonetics, morphology, and syntax.

ARAB 161 Arabic Library (2 credit-hours)

This course looks at the Arabic library as the home of Islamic heritage. It introduces students to the role Arab/Muslim scholars played in enriching humanity. Through this course students get to learn about all the genres, along with sufficient examples, of classic books, such as anthologies, dictionaries, biographies, bibliographies, travelogues, histories, and encyclopedias. The course also studies the development of Arabic library in three stages: ‘initiation’ which represents the period of collecting manuscripts, ‘establishment’ which represents the prevalence of scholarship and authorship, and finally ‘creativity’ which was the period when prose became a dominant form of expression.

ARAB 211 Early Islamic Literature (2 credit-hours)

This course studies poetry right after the birth of Islam. It discusses the effect of Islam on the form and content of Arabic literature. The course also includes a survey of the first Muslim poets who were borne in the pre-Islamic era and continued to produce poetry after Islam. In addition to its focus on poetry, the course also studies the oratory of the period.

ARAB 212 Umayyad Literature (3 credit-hours)

This is an introductory course to the literature of the Umayyad period. It provides a comprehensive background of the social, cultural and political milieu of the period, and studies its dominant poetic sub-genres, such as political, sectarian, panegyric, satire, prosodic and platonic poetry. In addition to its focus on poetry, the course also discusses the oratory, preaching, and prose of the period.

ARAB 225 Aesthetics (2 credit-hours)

The course approaches beauty as a phenomenon and attempts to define it and describe its roots. It also studies the history of Aesthetics and names its values, and examines the aesthetic ‘signified’ and ‘signifier’ in Arabic lexicons.

ARAB 231 Grammar II (3 credit-hours)

This course completes what is left of the nominal sentence cases in Arab 131, and proceeds to study all the noun cases of the regular sentence. The course offers sufficient exercises to help students digest these grammatical concepts.

ARAB 232 Applied Grammar (3 credit-hours)

The course is designed to help students practice what they have learned so far of parsing. In this course they get to apply their knowledge on traditional prose and poetry texts. The course stands on two major works: the first part constitutes a study of a classic grammar book, such as Ibn Hisham's Mughni Al-Labib, where students are introduced to more detailed discussion of grammatical questions. The second part requires two things: first, applying grammatical analysis to one traditional text; second, writing a research paper on one grammatical subject.

ARAB 241 Philology (3 credit-hours)

This is an introductory course in philology. It does not subscribe to 19th C. Western philology but to Arabic philology, which focuses on the origin and development of Arabic and its relationship to other Semitic languages. It also studies all the formational rules of the Arabic word, starting with its phonetics and phonology and how they evolved through history, and ending with morphology and semantics. The latter part of the course pays special attention to derivatives and connotations since they both play significant roles in Arabic lexicography. Student will try to come up with explanations for homonyms, synonyms and antonyms.

ARAB 242 Major Arab Classic Linguist (3 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to the first generation of Arabic grammarians, such as Abul-Aswad Al-Du’ali, Abdullah ibn Abi Ishaq Al-Hadrami, Esa ibn Amr ibn Alala’, Yunos ibn Habib, Alkhalil. Student will soon notice that debating thorny grammatical questions did not appear during this period but later on. The course also studies the history of the literature of Arabic linguistics. It examines the rules of authenticating a tradition, and discusses the disagreement among scholars on such rules. It also explains why linguists were more liable to disqualification than grammarians. The course uses Abu Baker ibn Durayd as a show case, discussing his life, his masters and students, and his books.

ARAB 251 Quranic Studies (3 credit-hours)

The course provides a comprehensive study of the Quran in three major areas. First, it defines it, examines its several designations and its miraculous challenges, discusses the phenomenon of revelation, explains why it was revealed in portions over 23 years, and describes the aspects of what was revealed in Macca and what was revealed in Madina. The course also surveys the prominent schools of its recitation, and explains its order and the difference between [ayah] a verse and [surah] a chapter, and discusses the difference between its clear decisive verses and its allegorical ones.

ARAB 252 Prophetic Tradition Studies (3 credit-hours)

The course offers a study of the Prophetic Tradition. It defines it and discusses the rules that scholars follow in registering it. Student gets to discuss these rules and learn how to categorize the Prophetic tradition accordingly.

ARAB 271 Persian I (3 credit-hours)

This course is an introduction to the Persian language. It teaches the alphabet and studies the grammatical components of the sentence. The course also provides a background of its history and describes the major aspects of Islamic Persian prose literature with reference to its most prominent writers.

ARAB 272 Persian II (3 credit-hours)

This course builds on Persian I. It studies pronouns, adjectives, verbs with their derivative forms. It also describes the main aspects of Persian poetic forms.

ARAB 273 Hebrew I (3 credit-hours)

This is an introduction to the Hebrew language. It teaches its alphabet and the basic grammatical components of its sentence. Part of the fun of this course is that it compares Hebrew grammar and vocabulary with Arabic.

ARAB 274 Hebrew II (3 credit-hours)

This course builds on Hebrew I. Students learn more about Hebrew grammar, and the basic of its morphology. The course also surveys the history of Hebrew literature and describes its main aspects with an eye to the influence of Arabic poetry on its writers in Andalusia.

ARAB 275 Turkish I (3 credit-hours)

This course is an introduction to Turkish language. It teaches its alphabet and describes its phonetic system. Students in this course also learn about basic components of the Turkish sentence: nouns, pronouns, and verbs.

ARAB 276 Turkish II (3 credit-hours)

This course builds on Turkish I. It teaches the tenses and verb-structures, and describes the basic forms of adverb and adverb. Along with its focus on syntax, it also teaches morphology to help students with spelling. The course also includes an introduction to Turkish literature and students get very existed when they learn about the similarities between it and Arabic literature.

ARAB 311 Abbasid Poetry (3 credit-hours)

This course helps students form a historical background of the Abbasid era. It describes its major changes in life and culture. The course studies the poetic innovations of the period, such as platonic verse, lampoons etc. It also includes a survey of the period canonical poets.

ARAB 312 Abbasid Prose (3 credit-hours)

This course discusses the development of Arabic prose in the period. It offers stylistic analysis of its prose literature, and studies its main genres, such as epistles, rhymed prose narratives, essays, and stories. The course also includes a survey of the period's major canonical prose writers.

ARAB 319 Major Arab Poet (2 credit-hours)

This course offers an extensive study of one major poet. The selection could come from classic or modern Arabic literature, but should be representative of its period.

ARAB 321 Rhetoric 1, Figures of Speech (3 credit-hours)

The course helps students form a background of Arabic rhetoric. It studies all figures of speech, and discusses their use in texts.

ARAB 322 Rhetoric II, Semantics (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to the main topics of style, such as eloquence, diction, predication, deletion, indefiniteness etc.

ARAB 325 Andalusian Literature (2 credit-hours)

The course helps students form a historical background of the Spanish peninsula before and during the Islamic era. It studies the development of thought and literature in Andalusia, and points to the major influences helped in forming it. The course also includes a survey of the canonical poets and prose writers of Andalusia.

ARAB 326 Major Arab Writer (2 credit-hours)

The course studies a major Arab writer. The selection could come from classic or modern Arabic literature. Students will study the texts closely to identify its author’s poetics and thoughts.

ARAB 331 Grammar III (3 credit-hours)

(the course does not appear in the Arabic Department list. I called the secretary of the Arabic department, and they said they don’t have the description)

ARAB 332 Morphology I (3 credit-hours)

This course is an introduction to Arabic morphology. It studies all the inflectional roots, and explains the rules of forming all kinds of nouns and verbs.

ARAB 335 13th- 17th Centuries Arabic Literature (3 credit-hours)

The course describes the changes in thought and literature over four centuries. It studies the canonical texts of the period to help students understand its intellectual milieu. The course starts with the Ayubi dynasty and covers two historical events: the Third Crusade and the conquest of Mongols. Next it studies the Mamluk dynasty, before it finishes with the Ottoman dynasty.

ARAB 340 History of Arabic Linguistics (2 credit-hours)

This course studies the history of Arabic grammar. It introduces students to its different schools and its most known grammarians.

ARAB 341 Arabic Dialects (2 credit-hours)

The course studies dialects using modern linguistics. It compares the classical methodology used in classifying Arabic terminology to the methodology of sociolinguistics in classifying dialects.

ARAB 345 Prosody (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to the founder of Arabic prosody, Al-Khalil Ibn Ahmad. It offers extensive amount of exercises to ground students in scanning the 16 Arabic meters. The course does not exclude modern forms of Arabic poetry from its study.

ARAB 411 Modern Arabic Poetry (3 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to the Renaissance of Arabic poetry. It studies its characteristics in from and content.

ARAB 412 Modern Arabic Prose (3 credit-hours)

The course studies the characteristics of the Renaissance of Arabic prose. It identifies the main factors that influenced its form and content.

ARAB 413 Saudi Literature (2 credit-hours)

This course is a survey of 20th century literature in Saudi Arabia. It describes the conditions of arts in the previous century and identifies the factors that caused its revival.

ARAB 420 Short Story (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to the genre of short story. It teaches them how to approach it as critics do, so they learn about narrator, narration, characters, plot etc. It also teaches them its different forms of presentation, such as realism, symbolism, romanticism etc.

ARAB 421 Arab Literary Criticism (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to different Arab classic critics. It describes their arguments and theories. The course also teaches them the terminology these critics used in evaluating the literature of their period.

ARAB 422 Modern Literary Criticism (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to Western critical theory form its origin in ancient Greece to our modern age. It discusses the imitative nature of art and talks about its purposes, whether pleasure or self-improvement. The course also offers a survey of modern literary theories and names the main genres of literature.

ARAB 426 Study of a Major Arab Critic (2 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to one Arab critic. They learn about the critical positions of the selected critic. The selection can be made from classic critics or the modern critics.

ARAB 430 Comparative Literature (2 credit-hours)

This course is an introduction to comparative studies. It provides students with a historical background of the field and its major theories and methodologies. The course also covers the main subjects discussed in this area of research, such as translation, influence and immigration.

ARAB 431 Grammar IV (3 credit-hours)

The course completes ARAB 331 discussion of modifiers. It also discusses all grammatical cases of object and subject; and introduces students to linking verbs and connectives.

ARAB 432 Morphology (3 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to Arabic morphology. Students learn about the morphological rules of changing vowels in nouns and verbs.

ARAB 437 Criticism in Application (3 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to critical theories, their philosophies and methodologies. Students in this course read from Arabic classic criticism and modern criticism as well.

ARAB 499 Short Thesis (2 credit-hours)

The student will prepare a paper under the supervision of a member of the faculty, dealing with a selected aspect of language or literature. Upon completion of the paper, it will be discussed by a panel of faculty members.

Graduate Courses

ARAB 512 Literary Theory (2 credit hours)

This course focuses on the following subjects: First, it investigates the nature of literature and its relationship to imagery, rhythm, and ethics. Second, it studies the role and nature of authorship in literature. Third, using the receptionist theory, it discusses forms of interpretations. Forth, it explores the autonomy of the literary text and shows how it is possible to read it without referring it to its historical context.

ARAB 513 Grammar (2 credit hours)

This course introduces students to specific arguments among classic grammarians such as Sibawayh, Ibn Al-Alanbari, and Ibn Hisham. It explores their disagreements over specific grammatical questions, such as irregularity, deletion and ellipses. In addition, the course offers an extensive review of specific grammatical terms and concepts..

ARAB 516 Literary Studies (2 credit hours)

(vague description in the original document. The course does not give us any specific idea about the course)

ARAB 517 Literary Genres (3 credit-hours)

This course offers a survey of the history of literary genres form its early days in Greece to our modern age. Students get to learn about epic, drama, novel, short story, ode, ballad etc.

ARAB 521 Literary Criticism (2 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to modern critical theories, and explores their influence on Arabic critical theories.

ARAB 523 Literary Criticism Question (2 credit-hours)

This course trains students on how to use critical theories in their analyses of literary texts. Each student will work with his instructor on one specific question in literary criticism.

ARAB 524 Esthetics (2 credit-hours)

This course explores Esthetics and its relation to philosophy, psychology, sociology, rhetoric and criticism. It also describes its value to all forms of art: visual, written and aural.

ARAB 525 Comparative Literature (2 credit-hours)

The course introduces students to the history of comparative studies and to its main areas. It covers the major comparative schools in the West and the East. The course also includes application of the comparative theories on literary texts.

ARAB 542 Linguistic Question (2 credit-hours)

In this course students learn about modern linguistic theories. They read about structuralism, applied linguistics and generative grammar and compare them to what they learned from their studies of Arabic linguistics.

ARAB 543 Classic Book (2 credit-hours)

In this course, students get to study closely one classic book from Arabic literature. The selection could come from linguistics or literature.

ARAB 544 Rhetoric (2 credit-hours)

The course starts with classic rhetoric. It describes its subject matters and applications, and discusses its relation to grammar, hermeneutics and criticism. In the second part of the course, students also learn about modern rhetoric.

ARAB 546 Language Traditions (2 credit-hours)

This course discusses the principles that classic Arab scholars used in setting language criteria. It compares the old grammarians’ classification of language into word categories with the morphological rules set by modern linguists. This can help student understand the complexity of classic Arab lexicographers’ work.

ARAB 547 Grammar and Morphology Questions (2 credit-hours)

In this course, students study specific grammatical and morphological questions, such as deletion, irregularity and modification. They also study the semantic implications of some articles and prepositions, and the meaning of tenses of both linking and regular verbs.

ARAB 563 Manuscripts (2 credit-hours)

This course trains students on manuscript research. They learn about the methodology of authenticating a manuscript. It teaches them how to process a manuscript into a modern text format, so they get to know how to treat the marginalia and commentary of the original text, and sort out the indices and bibliographies.

ARAB 564 Research (2credit-hours)

This course introduces students to major research methodologies. Each student will be asked to do one complete research under the supervision of the instructor.

ARAB 617 Orientalism (3 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to orientalism as a critical theory. It studies its contribution to scholarship in our modern age and in the past.

ARAB 634 Arabic Classic Criticism (3 credit-hours)

This course focuses on specific questions, which modern Arab scholars raise about Arabic classic criticism.

ARAB 635 Modern Literary Theories (3 credit-hours)

The course explores modern literary theories, such as psychoanalysis, formalism, structuralism, materialism, receptionist theory, and semiotics. With these theories, students study the literary text from five different perspectives: literary quality, language, context, author, and reader.

ARAB 637 Linguistics Questions (3 credit-hours)

The course discusses the division between classic grammarians and lexicographers.

ARAB 644 Semantics (3 credit-hours)

The course surveys the development of semantics and rhetoric from classics to the pragmatics of our modern age. It discusses the relationship between the signified and signifier and raises questions about homonyms and synonyms, and contextual meaning.

ARAB 647 Modern Linguistics (3 credit-hours)

This course introduces students to major linguistic theories in our modern age. This includes the structuralism of Ferdinand de Saussure, sociolinguistics, Chomsky’s competence theory and pragmatics.