Spring 2025 Middle East UN3260 section 001

RETHINKING MIDDLE EAST POLITCS

RETHINKING MIDDLE EAST PO

Call Number 11293
Day & Time
Location
MW 10:10am-11:25am
To be announced
Points 4
Grading Mode Standard
Approvals Required None
Instructor Timothy Mitchell
Type LECTURE
Method of Instruction In-Person
Course Description This course examines a set of questions that have shaped the study of the politics of the modern Middle East. It looks at the main ways those questions have been answered, exploring debates both in Western academic scholarship and among scholars and intellectuals in the region itself. For each question, the course offers new ways of thinking about the issue or ways of framing it in different terms. The topics covered in the course include: the kinds of modern state that emerged in the Middle East and the ways its forms of power and authority were shaped; the birth of economic development as a way of describing the function and measuring the success of the state, and the changing metrics of this success; the influence of oil on the politics of the region; the nature and role of Islamic political movements; the transformation of the countryside and the city and the role of rural populations and of urban protest in modern politics; and the politics of armed force and political violence in the region, and the ways in which this has been understood. The focus of the course will be on the politics of the twentieth century, but many topics will be traced back into developments that occurred in earlier periods, and several will be explored up to the present. The course is divided into four parts, each ending with a paper or exam in which participants are asked to analyze the material covered. Each part of the course has a geographical focus on a country or group of countries and a thematic focus on a particular set of questions of historical and political analysis.
Web Site Vergil
Department Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies
Enrollment 132 students (120 max) as of 11:06AM Saturday, December 7, 2024
Status Full
Subject Middle East
Number UN3260
Section 001
Division Interfaculty
Note Students in MDES UN3260 must register for MDES UN3261.
Section key 20251MDES3260W001