A Comparative Analyis and Response to the Telling of the Story of Joseph in the Qur'an and Genesis

Over two class periods, students will listen to a bilingual reading of the first forty-four verses of Sura 12 of the Qur'an in Arabic and in English.


In response to this experience, students will write a page-and-a-half to two-page comparative analysis and response.  You could compare this assignment to a summary and response assignment. In this assignment, however, students will not summarize their reading.  Rather, they will present first n comparative analysis of Sura 12 of the Qur'an with the telling of the Joseph story in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament.


Use a table/t-chart to keep track of your analysis as you compare and contrast the two tellings of one of the three shared stories found in these books:


Joseph's dream and his brother's plot against him (Qur'an 12:1-18 and Genesis 37)
Potiphar's wife attempt to seduce Joseph (Qu'ran 12:23-31 and Genesis 39)
Joseph's imprisonment (Qu'ran 12:32-42 and Genesis 40)

In the first portion of your  paper, compare and contrast the telling of your selected story in the two texts.  In the second portion of your paper, discuss your personal reaction to listening and reading this story from the Qur'an.  Discuss both your personal reaction the content of your selected story and to the experience of viewing and listening to the story in Arabic.


The number of paragraphs in a student's analysis and response paper will vary.  At minimum there will be four:  two for the analysis (one paragraph for the Qur'an telling and another for the Genesis telling) and two for the response (one for the student's response to the content and another for the student's response to the experience of viewing and listening to the story in Arabic).  If a student chooses to compare and contrast the two tellings using and aspect-by-aspect organization, they will have more paragraphs.  A student may also choose to have more than two paragraphs if they wish to subdivide their discussion of their response to the experience of viewing and listening to the story in Arabic.

Students will prepare their rough draft for Monday October 31st.  They will conduct a peer critique in class.  They will make revisions on Monday night and conduct a peer edit on Tuesday, November 1st. 


Students will submit their paper electronically to Turn-it-in (Links to an external site.) and on paper to Mr. Stone. The electronic submission deadline is 11:59 Tuesday, November 1, 2016 and the paper submission deadline is class time on Wednesday, November 2, 2015.


The paper should be written in MLA format.