HIST 385 - Colonialism, Resistance, and Knowledge in Modern Middle Eastern History

Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)

This course examines the historiography of the modern Middle East. We begin with a number of older, foundational texts in an effort to understand and contextualize Orientalism as it emerged in the nineteenth-century, as well as its intellectual legacy in the United States. The course then turns to the substance and impact of post-colonialist interventions since the 1960s that have thrown many “givens” of the discipline into doubt. The bulk of the course focuses on recent scholarship, allowing us to explore how (or whether) historians of Islam and the Middle East have benefited from the new scholarly perspectives that emerged in the wake of anti-colonialist struggles. The meaning of “modernity” serves as a principal organizing question of the class. Joshua Schreier.

Prerequisite(s): HIST 174 or HIST 214 or HIST 255; or permission of the instructor.