Introduction to the Middle East
A sweep through Middle Eastern history, globally contextualized. Weeks 1-6 treat the rise of Islam, the Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, 19th-century reforms, European imperialism, and incipient globalization in the region. Weeks 7-12 focus on state-society relations, political ideologies, and foreign actors in the 20th and 21st centuries. You will come away with a basic grasp of the region's past and present and its mix of idiosyncrasies and global links.
Instructors: Michael Allan Cook
Muslims and the Qur'an
A broad-ranging introduction to pre-modern, modern, and contemporary Islam in light of how Muslims have approached their foundational religious text, the Qur'an. Topics include: Muhammad and the emergence of Islam; theology, law and ethics; war and peace; mysticism; women and gender; and modern debates on Islamic reform. We shall examine the varied contexts in which Muslims have interpreted their sacred text, their agreements and disagreements on what it means and, more broadly, their often competing understandings of Islam and of what it is to be a Muslim.
Instructors: Muhammad Qasim Zaman
Political and Economic Development of the Middle East
This course offers an opportunity to study the political economy of the Middle East. This semester we focus on oil-exporting monarchical countries in the Gulf/Arabian Peninsula, which are under rapid transformation today. We discuss issues such as the reasons for the durability of monarchism in this region; the unsustainability of their oil-based economies; challenges facing the attempt to make a transition to a post-oil economy (both in terms of income and the source of energy - in light of the rise of renewables and the global climate change regime); the youth unemployment problem and challenges facing the creation and localization of jobs.
Instructors: Makio Yamada
Seminar in Research Methods
Introduces NES majors to the sources, tools, and methods used in Near Eastern Studies, and to central questions and debates that have informed the region's study in varying disciplines (history, comparative literature, religious studies, political science, and anthropology). Also covers the nuts and bolts of academic research and writing: how to design a research project, find and make sense of relevant primary and secondary sources, develop an argument, and write a compelling scholarly paper. Includes guest lectures and visits to Firestone Library.
Instructors: Jonathan Marc Gribetz
Muslims, Jews and Christians in North Africa: Interactions, Conflicts and Memory
This has been as one of the main events of the modern times in North Africa: from the 1950s onwards, the Jewish local communities and the European settlers started to leave Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. We will study the various interactions between Muslims, Jews and Christians in this part of the Islamic world. How did Europeans transform North African Islam and local societies? We will as well explore the reasons why the local Jews and Europeans left en masse after the colonial period and how North African Muslims, Jews and former European settlers developed either a strong memory of a shared past or a mutual distrust even today.
Instructors: M'hamed Oualdi
Blood, Sex, and Oil: The Caucasus
The Caucasus has served as a contested borderland from time immemorial and has fascinated outsiders for nearly as long. It is today a tense and explosive region. This course surveys the history of both the north and south Caucasus. It begins with an overview of the region's geography, peoples, and religions. It then examines in more detail the history of the Caucasus from the Russian conquest to the present day. Topics covered include ethnic and religious coexistence and conflict, imperial rule, imagery and identity, literature, Sovietization, the formation of national identities, and pipeline politics.
Instructors: Michael Anthony Reynolds
Modern Iran
Why is Iran so often in the headlines? Why is what happens in Iran matters so much to the rest of the world? In this course, we try to find some answers to questions about Iranian politics, culture, recent history and society. The class covers Iran's long twentieth century, from the rise of the constitutional revolution to the Islamic revolution of 1979 and its aftermath.
Instructors: Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi
The World of the Cairo Geniza
The importance of the Cairo Geniza, a cache of texts discovered in the attic of a medieval Egyptian synagogue, goes beyond Jewish history, crossing the breadth of the medieval world and offering an intimate view of commerce, slavery, heresy and seafaring; of what people wore, ate, rode, believed and did all day; of who married whom and why; of a Shi'ite state ruling over Sunnis, Christians and Jews; and of a society that remains the best documented of its period. Students in the course will read unpublished primary sources to gain an insider's glimpse of what we can know and can't know in premodern history.
Instructors: Marina Rustow
Global Feminisms: Feminist Movements in the Middle East and Beyond
This course explores how feminist thought & activism circulates globally by examining a variety of feminist movements in the Middle East & North Africa. Beginning with modern feminist thought and activism in mid-19th century Syria & Egypt, we'll trace feminist movements in various contemporary contexts, from Morocco, Iran, Turkey, Tunisia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon & Egypt in the 20th century, to women's participation in the Arab Spring and transnational Islamic movements in the 21st century. We'll map the local and geopolitical discourses that have shaped regional feminisms, and ask how local feminisms are transnational or global.
Instructors: Satyel Larson
Imperialism and Reform in the Middle East and the Balkans
The major Near Eastern diplomatic crises and the main developments in internal Near Eastern history. The focus will be upon the possible connections between diplomatic crises and the process of modernization. Oral reports and a short paper.
Instructors: Mehmed Sükrü Hanioglu