The UO curriculum offers three years of Arabic courses dedicated to increasing students’ ability to speak, read, understand, and write Arabic. Courses at the University of Oregon are designed to produce highly skilled Arabic speakers who pursue degrees in the academic majors of their choice, and to compete for national fellowships such as the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) program.
Explore Arabic Studies Courses
The University of Oregon course catalog offers degree plans and a complete list of courses in the Arabic Studies Program.
Featured Courses
Each of the 400 level text courses are designed to improve students’ facility with reading classical and modern standard Arabic sources and enable them to become increasingly independent in working with them. They also introduce students to the latest academic literature on the topic. These classes are examples of topics included in the current rotation.
ARB 410 (Topics) The Collection of the Qur’an
Instructor: David Hollenberg
The class covers history of the first collecting, writing down, and canonization of the Qur'an. Plan to examine and critically assess early Arabic accounts that pertain to the development of the Qur'an as a written, fixed scripture, most of which come from Arabic Islamic works composed in the ninth and tenth centuries. Sub-topics include accounts of extra-canonical Qur'anic texts and the changing sense of the concepts al-kitāb" (scripture) and qurrāʾ (recitors) in the early and classical tradition.
ARB 410 (Topics) Women in Islam
Instructor: David Hollenberg
This course introduces students to discourses pertaining to women in the classical Islamic Middle East. According to medieval Muslims, what is the status of women as they relate to men? What are women’s right and obligations in marriage and divorce? What are women’s rights concerning labor? To what extent do women have control over their bodies as it applies to sexual relationships? For women, what forms of sexual desire and activity are appropriate (or inappropriate), legal (or illegal), natural (or unnatural), and how are these attitudes conveyed?
ARB 410 (Topics) The Prophet Joseph in Islam
Instructor: David Hollenberg
A beautiful young man is seduced by the wife of his powerful patron in whose home he resides. He resists her advances out of loyalty to his patron. She reports him for attempted rape. The young man is punished, but later vindicated and rises to prominence. This course will introduce students to the academic study of the story of the Prophet Joseph in classical Islamic literature (chiefly between the eighth and 15th centuries).