Global Arc

This is a course in comparative political theory. Beginning with a study of classical and contemporary Western liberal and democratic theory, this course explores how modern Iranian political theorists and ideologues interpret or critique liberalism and democracy or offer theories of government that stand at odds with liberal and democratic theory. These Iranian authors draw from both religious and non-religious (including Marxist) perspectives. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to put the diverse authors that they read into dialogue with one another.

The decline of marriage in recent decades is often tied to the decline of religion. But why should marriage, a contractual relationship centered on sex and property, be seen as a religious practice? This seminar considers the varied and surprising ways in which the great monotheistic traditions of the Near East came to connect certain forms of human marriage - or their rejection- to divine devotion, and considers how marriage worked in societies shaped by these traditions. Spanning biblical Israel to the medieval Islamic world, this course will introduce you to the historical study of Near Eastern religions and to the field of family history.

This course provides a detailed survey of the key jihadi groups and ideologies that have taken form in the Middle East since the 1970s. From the Iranian revolution to 9/11, and from Hezbollah to ISIS, it introduces jihadism, including pre-modern Islamic theology and law and the ways in which these have been appropriated and repurposed by jihadi ideologues for political ends. The course also shows how jihadis disseminate their ideas (e.g. journals, pamphlets, books, cassette tapes and CDs, poetry, chants, satellite television shows, online videos, and social media) and considers Sunni and Shi'i jihadi movements.

This course will look at a variety of canonical texts and genres from the Classical Arabic literary heritage and examine them through the question of "truth" and "representation." In a culture that is often said to frown upon fictional writing, we will explore attitudes towards language as a means of gaining knowledge about the world, on the one hand, and as a way to depict "reality," on the other. The texts we will be reading range from pre-Islamic poetry to 13th century shadow plays and cover a wide range of topics, including philosophy, mysticism, historiography, as well as Islamic science and art. Readings will be in English.

This class explores medieval Islamic history through everyday documents from Egypt: letters, decrees, contracts, court records, and accounts. We will read a wide range of documents in translation, learn to understand them, and use them to evaluate politics, religion, class, commerce, material history, and family relationships in Egypt from just before the Islamic conquests until just before the Ottoman era. We will also consider documents themselves, as historical artifacts and as historical evidence. Why did medieval people produce and preserve written records? And what does history look like when told through documents?

How does one write a history of quotidian life in a premodern society? This course takes history to the micro-level, with rigor. Sometimes the simplest questions (food, clothing, shelter, patterns of marriage and reproduction) can be the most challenging - and exciting - to answer. Our laboratory will be the medieval twin cities of Fustat-Cairo, a burgeoning metropolis astride the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean and trans-Saharan trade routes and an excellent place for take-out food. You will have the opportunity to contribute to an evolving state of knowledge via primary sources and hands-on experiments.

This course introduces students to classic and recent theoretical debates about secularism and secularization. We will consider a range of historical-ethnographic examples, focusing particularly on the limits of secularism in its modern encounter with Islam and Muslim communities in North Africa, the Middle East, Europe and North America. By comparing the realities of everyday life in a variety of national contexts, we will ask what secularism offers as a human way of experiencing the world, a mode of legitimating norms and constructing authority, and a method of telling stories and creating myths about human values and historical progress.

Despite living in an increasingly globalized society, the notion of different and opposing civilizations is still used as a way to add meaning and definition to our world. In this course, we will critically evaluate what is at stake when employing the concept of civilization. Using historical contexts from "Western" and "Near Eastern" civilizations, we will explore civilizational encounters from the Afroasiatic roots of Classical Civilization to America's culture wars. With one foot in the past and one in the present we will seek to understand whether civilizations exist and why civilizational paradigms endure despite drawing controversy.

Violence in the contemporary Middle East may be seen as a rebellion of youth against aging political regimes and the foreign influences in the region. This course is intended to examine this generational hypothesis in the context of the social and political history of the Middle East and North Africa. Particular emphasis will be given to the study of social as well as political violence. Students will be introduced to such topics as the emergence of youth as a political concern, the way Islamist movements focus on youth issues (e.g., education and leisure), and the complex and diverse relationships between the body, violence, and politics.

This course explores the history of North Africa, an area undergoing radical political turmoil since the beginning of the Arab spring in January 2011. The course explores the colonial and postcolonial transformations of the Maghrib from the 19th to the first decade of the 21st century. Through a range of secondary and primary sources, the purpose of the course is to give an overview of the colonial effects and legacies on and in North African societies, but also to start questioning the colonial period as a framework of analysis.