Yasmine Seale

I’m returning to Columbia this fall with a class on the 1001 Nights.

I first taught this class while I was pregnant with Z. It was winter, a tunnel of short dark days, and for three months I did little but sleep and teach the Nights. At the end of the last session I told the group that a child had been listening to our conversations, and when they all came over for dinner to mark the end of the semester, one student brought a sun and a moon — Z’s first gifts — since we often talked about them being the only punctuation marks in the Nights.

The class is open to all at Columbia by application. I’m glad to be teaching it through the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, founded by Edward Said and Gayatri Spivak to promote thinking across boundaries.

Poster design is by the wizard @kit_sch_ and the image is part of a series of collages I made from Edward Lane’s 1838 translation 🌸✂️