Reading the Middle East  introduces students to key texts (in translation), and key debates, from or about the Middle East. The module aims to ask questions about the role of race, religion, regional geo-politics, sectarian and other violence, gender and sexuality. It will allow students to explore these and other topics though some of the most interesting, iconic, or controversial writing to come from, or engage with, the region in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. The question of translation (literal, cultural, metaphorical) is at the centre of the module’s approach to these texts. At a time when it feels as though the Middle East and its people have never been so demonised, nor so victimised, the course seeks to interrogate the work that such texts do in the university and beyond to represent, challenge representations, or ‘translate’ their cultures of origin, and to shed light on the many prisms through which we analyse, understand, and perceive the Middle East, its people, languages and cultures today.