Reading Moroccan Culture

This course examines gender, ethnicity, class, family, age, and religious relationships within contemporary Morocco. It first provides students with a historical overview of Morocco since its independence in 1956, focusing on the monarchies of Hassan II and Mohammed VI the current king. It explores the power dynamics that exist in a society that is predominantly patrilinear and where gender roles are mostly divided along a binary system; it studies the place of the individual in a society where the collective ego prevails; it considers the place of Berber identity within Moroccan society and finally, it explores Sufism as a counter-power to any form of Islamic rigorism. All the themes studied are substantiated with presentations by Moroccan scholars working in the fields of sociology, gender, ethnic, religious, and music studies.