Teaching strategies for one of the world's most widely read collections of stories The Thousand and One Nights, composed in Arabic from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries, is one of the world's most widely circulated and influential collections of stories. To help instructors introduce the tales to students, this volume provides historical context and discusses the many transformations of the stories in a variety of cultures. Among the topics covered are the numerous translations and their impact on the tales' reception; various genres represented by the tales; gender, race, and slavery; and adaptations of the stories in films, graphic novels, and other media across the world and under conditions of both imperialism and postcolonialism. The essays serve instructors in subjects like medieval literature, world literature, and Middle and Near Eastern studies and make a case for teaching the Thousand and One Nights in courses on identity and race.

Preface Part One: Materials Contexts Texts Film and Popular Culture The Instructor's Library Part Two: Approaches Introduction, by Paulo Lemos Horta Contexts of Origin The Thousand and One Nights as Arabic Literature, by Bruce Fudge The Thousand and One Nights and Rethinking Arabic Literature, by Wen-Chin Ouyang The Textual Tradition of the Thousand and One Nights: Teaching the Collection's Complexity, by Ulrich Marzolph The Thousand and One Nights as Urban Literature, by Nadine Roth The Nights as Crime Fiction: Teaching "The Tale of the Murdered Girl", by Roger Allen The Tales as World Literature "Ali Baba" and "Aladdin" as Modern World Literature, by Paulo Lemos Horta Travels with the Tales of Sindbad, by Maurice Pomerantz Controversies Shahrazad's Gender Lessons, by Suzanne Gauch Reading Race and Racism in the Thousand and One Nights, by Rachel Schine Race, Gender, and Slavery in the Arabian Nights, by Parisa Vaziri The Thousand and One Nights in World Film History, by Samhita Sunya Intertexts Teaching the Arabian Nights through Graphic Novels, by Shawkat M. Toorawa The Thousand and One Nights in American Film and Fiction, by Margaret Litvin The Thousand and One Nights and Mediterranean Framed Narrative Traditions, by Karla Mallette Intertextual Labyrinths: Borges and the Nights, by Dominique Jullien Contexts of Circulation The Thousand and One Nights as Nigerian Literature, by Abdalla Uba Adamu Orality and Performance of the Thousand and One Nights, by Susan Slyomovics The "Thousand and Second Night" Motif, by Evanghelia Stead Notes on Contributors Works Cited