Contact Nathalie
Mail Code CSI
Nathalie Arnold
Franklin Patterson Hall 226
413.559.5308
Nathalie Arnold
Dean of Decolonial and Global Studies
Nathalie Arnold (Koenings) is dean of Decolonial and Global Studies and professor of anthropology, literary arts and African studies. A transdisciplinary scholar, her work at the intersection of African, Indian Ocean, and Islamic Studies spans critical anthropology, multispecies ethnography, literature, writing, and translation studies.
In anthropology, Nathalie has focused primarily on Swahili Muslim communities of the Western Indian Ocean, publishing work about the politics of space and song, collective memory, poetry, material culture, foodways, and imaginal worlds in Pemba, Zanzibar. Her book, Mystical Power and Politics on the Swahili Coast: Uchawi in Pemba (Boydell and Brewer/James Currey, 2024), traces changes in the mystical geographies of Pemba through the greatest transformations of the 20th and 21st centuries, including the Zanzibar Revolution, the adoption of multiparty democracy, Islamic revival and reform, and the rise of neoliberal capital. Long interested in social geography and the phenomenology of space, she has in recent years turned her attention to multispecies relations, in 2023 initiating a new research project exploring these in Islamic contexts on the Swahili Coast. The first stage of this research focuses on pigeons, who, in Zanzibar, participate in the creation of Islamic temporalities, engage in prayer, and through their behavior provoke polyphonous human meditations on the nature of love, gender, mobility, and freedom.
Having spoken French and Swahili all her life, Nathalie is also an active literary translator working from and into Swahili as well as from French into English. Her translations include Tamasha, a novella by Omani-Zanzibari writer Naila Barwani (Dira, 2022), and shorter works of fiction and poetry by Mohammed Said Abdalla, Mohammed Ghassani, Adam Shafi, and Nassor Hilal Kharusi. Her work has appeared in internationally recognized journals such as Asymptote, Five Points, Words without Borders, and The New Orleans Review.
Publishing fiction as N.S. Koenings, Nathalie is focused on global peripheries where diverse multilingual characters search for safety and comfort in contexts shaped by Empire. Her first novel, The Blue Taxi, and her short story collection, Theft, were published by Little Brown and Company in 2006 and 2009. Her short stories have appeared in Story Quarterly, Glimmer Train, The Sangam House Reader and The Enkare Review.
Across all her teaching, Nathalie is always both a multicultural thinker and a writer. All her courses, whether in writing, literature, or anthropology, center writing as a mode of reflection and a method of discovery. Having first encountered English in the classroom, and trilingual herself, she is acutely aware of challenges faced by students for whom English is a second or third language, as well as by students whose home cultures are not reflected in the dominant culture of educational institutions.
Recent and Upcoming Courses
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Daily Life in the Levant: oral history, ethnography, literature: This course asks what "daily life" has meant and means across the Levant today. Centering work by diverse Middle Eastern scholars, we will engage: accounts of village and urban life at key moments in the 19th and 20th centuries; oral histories of struggles for independence and nation-building; and ethnographic studies of traditional crafts, ecology, cuisine, and identity in the past and today, as well as contemporary literature. Members will collaborate on an ongoing 'glossary' project and will also propose and carry out independent studies of their own, which they will then present to the class. Keywords: Levant, Middle East, anthropology, ethnography, film. This course addresses issues of race and power. Keywords: Middle East, Southwest Asia, Levant, colonialism, anthropology, literature.
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Across the inherited colonial disciplines, scholars increasingly propose that human beings can no longer be studied in isolation from the myriad nonhuman others who share the planet with us. Drawing at once on deeply located indigenous knowledges and changes in global scientific thought, contemporary posthuman and/or multispecies scholarship demonstrates that 'human' beings come into existence, develop, and live and die in intimate relation to other forms of life, now understood as social, philosophical, and historical actors themselves. In the first six weeks, we will encounter core texts together (Kavesh, Haraway, Tsing, Parrenas, Rose, Braverman). In the second half, students will work on an independent multispecies/posthuman project of their own. The work will include written reflections and presentations on our shared readings, and an individualized annotated bibliography and presentation of independent work. Prerequisite: a previous 100- or 200-level course featuring a basic introduction to sociocultural multispecies/posthuman thought Keywords: posthuman, multispecies, critical animal studies, ethnography, anthropology
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This course asks what "daily life" has meant and means in Palestine today. Centering work by diverse Palestinians, we will engage: accounts of village and urban life in Palestine before 1948, ethnographies and oral histories of the Nakba, and studies of ecology, cuisine, identity, and struggle in the past and today, as well as contemporary literature by Palestinian writers and poets. Members will collaborate on an ongoing 'glossary' project and will also propose and carry out independent studies of their own, which they will then present to the class. Keywords: Middle East, Palestine, anthropology, ethnography, film. This course addresses issues of race and power. Keywords:Middle East, Palestine, colonialism, anthropology, ethnography
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The peoples, philosophies, arts, and cultural resources of Africa have made and continue to make fundamental contributions to every society on earth - particularly to visionings of humanity, justice, liberation, and community. Yet, from the imperial United States, Africa is often the least considered continent, its diverse peoples and realities obscured by racist stereotypes rooted in the long and ongoing history of European colonialisms and empire. This introduction to African narratives, focused on key historical, modern and contemporary African texts of different genres, unfolds in three parts. Through early epic poems, we encounter precolonial African kingdoms; next, we engage anti-colonial texts and confront European imperialism in Africa; we end the semester by engaging contemporary fictions and philosophy. Works we may consider include: Sundiata and Mwindo, Fanon, Cesaire, Diop, Kenyatta, p'Bitek, Lumumba, wa Thion'go, Achebe, Ba, Biko, el Sadawi, Rugero,Tadjo and Sarr. Keywords:Africa, Africana, colonialism, decolonization, literature, film The content of this course deals with issues of race and power.
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Across the world, humans have viewed animals as: ancestors, teachers, friends, members of the family, meat, workers, pests, and threats. Everywhere, the 'human' is defined in relation to the 'animal.' Yet this relation is construed in diverse and contradictory ways. Ideas about what it means to 'be (an) animal' have long structured visions of belonging and otherness, as well as violence, racism, and oppression. As animals vanish or recede from human settlements, their images proliferate around us. Drawing on cultural, legal, and gender studies, multispecies ethnography, literature, and history, this seminar looks at varied human relationships to animals, animals' diverse roles in society, history, and the arts, and how ideas about 'animals' shape our sense of 'being human.' While we will write and research regularly, major assignments include: a personal essay, an annotated bibliography and an independent project in a form of students' choice. Keywords:animals, animal studies, anthropology, transpecies, multispecies
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Daily Life in Palestine: a HALF COURSE engaging essays, history, ethnography and film: This experimental half-course will focus on accounts of community life in Gaza and the West Bank, engaging work about specific communities and individuals at specific moments in time with an alertness to materiality, memory, affect, and the politics of representation. We will also reflect together on the effects of different kinds of narratives. In addition to regular in-class writing, students will work with a partner to lead one segment of class discussion, presenting their findings on a specific topic of their choice. The class will also collaboratively generate a wide-ranging bibliography of sources from and about Palestinian worlds. The course meets for an extended session once a week for the first 8 weeks of the semester. Keywords:Middle East, Palestine, anthropology, ethnography, film. Keywords:Middle East, Palestine, anthropology, ethnography, film The content of this course deals with issues of race and power
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While the climate crisis presents urgent scientific challenges, climate issues are also deeply political, economic, cultural, and epistemological. While news outlets routinely cover climate events in Europe and the USA, far less is said about the colonial histories and entrenched inequalities that put communities of colour at far greater risk of climate-related devastation. Despite producing a minute fraction of the world's carbon emissions, historically marginalized communities consistently suffer the worst effects of planetary warming. Grounded in contemporary anthropology, this course asks: How do marginalized communities across the world respond to climate inequalities? What alternative visions and modes of co-existence might diverse meteorologies and ways of constructing 'nature' suggest? How does 'climate denial' emerge, and what does climate justice look like? We will consider sources from: Botswana, Namibia, Uganda, Zanzibar, the Amazon, Palestine, India, Bangladesh, Norway, and Puerto Rico. This course counts toward the Five College African Studies Certificate KEYWORDS:Climate, ethnography, Africana, Africa, Global South
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The ancient Swahili city-states of the East African coast have played a crucial role in world history, especially across the African continent, the Indian Ocean, and Europe. The Swahili coast has been a key site of exchange and mixing between African, Islamic, and Indian Ocean knowledges, practices, and languages. Today, Swahili fashions, cuisines, and literatures, together with the Swahili language, play crucial roles in social and imaginative life in East Africa and beyond. Swahili is spoken by 82 million people across the world. In African-American communities, Swahili - the language of Kwanzaa - has played a key role in spiritual practices. Today, translations of literary works from Swahili into English increasingly bring Swahili narratives into direct conversation with English-language readerships. Through an exploration of ethnography, life history, Swahili literature and film, this course introduces students to diverse 'Swahili worlds,' from East Africa to Oman, Europe and the United States. KEYWORDS:Africana, Africa, Swahili, literature, film
