Courseshare for Spring 2018: New Culture Course Offerings

All LANG Courseshare courses planned for Spring 2018 are now open for registration. There are two upper-division culture courses open to all students.

LANG 3601 Sámi Culture, Yesterday and Today

The northern tracts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula seem for many a singularly remote locale—Europe's area of sparsest population, an Arctic region where snow can remain on the ground for nine months out of the year and where the annual daylight regimen swings from a summer of perpetual light to a long, dark winter during which the sun never rises above the horizon. Yet to its indigenous inhabitants—the Sámi (Lapps)—this land is rich and bountiful, an age-old ally that deserves to be reverenced and safeguarded. Here Sámi people have lived from time immemorial, sustaining themselves on various combinations of hunting, fishing, reindeer husbandry, farming, and trade. In this course, we explore the culture of the Sámi people, both on Sámi terms—through examination of Sámi language, oral tradition, material culture, religion, literature, film, digital media, and other cultural products—and on terms imposed from the outside. We will examine how neighboring peoples defined and disenfranchised Sámi over time, depicting them as magicians, primitives, racial inferiors, and trouble-makers in a manner that allowed authorities to discredit and disregard Sámi views. We will look at the legacy of this process of colonization as it continues today and how Sámi have worked to preserve their culture and bring it into the future. We will compare the Sámi situation to that of indigenous peoples elsewhere in the world, particularly those of North America. We will look at the international "Fourth World" or indigenous peoples' movement that has resulted in legislation like the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ongoing battles throughout the world to secure self-determination, cultural preservation, and resource rights for some of the world's smallest and most endangered populations. Through it all we will see a culture of remarkable vitality and resilience, one that offers deep wisdom and pragmatic insights for a world contemplating the notion of sustainability.

This course is taught in English and there are no prerequisites. It is taught by Dr. Thomas DuBois at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

LANG 3651 Islamic Seminar on Rumi, Sufi Poet

Rumi is today the most well-known Sufi across the world. His legacy suggests that this is not undeserved, for he not only composed thousands of verses of poetry that have become revered internationally, but his disciples formed, on the basis of his teachings, a Sufi order that became highly influential for many centuries in three different continents. Moreover, he has come to be considered in much of the world as one of the greatest ever mystics to have lived.

This seminar will focus on Rumi and his writings, in order to acquire an in-depth understanding of Sufi spirituality and literature. The method will be to contextualize Rumi historically and then analyze his poetry and discourses, with an emphasis on his didactic poetry. At every stage, the analysis of texts in translation will be emphasized, both as a means to acquire a more in-depth and nuanced understanding, and also to develop skills in textual analysis that are indispensable for advanced undergraduate and graduate study. Original sources can be provided for anyone who reads Persian.

This course is taught in English and there are no prerequisites. It is taught by Dr Jawid Mojaddedi from Rutgers University through the Digital Islamic Studies Curriculum (DISC) program.

The other eight LANG Courseshare courses are language sequence continuation courses:

• LANG 2012 Accelerated Catalan II
• LANG 1162 Beginning Hungarian II
• LANG 1062 Beginning Persian II
• LANG 2062 Intermediate Persian II
• LANG 1072 Beginning Polish II (partially online)
• LANG 1102 Beginning Modern Tibetan II
• LANG 1122 Beginning Vietnamese II (fully online)
• LANG 2122 Intermediate Vietnamese II (fully online)

Students and advisors who do not see the language or level they are looking for should email Stephanie Treat at elsie@umn.edu as soon as possible to convey their interest.