Introduction to the Modern Middle East
MME100
(Draft of August 29, 2014)
M.-W., 10AM-11AM, Sever Hall 203
Sections TBD
Office Hours: Mondays 11:30 AM-1:30 PM, Barker 411
Please sign up here for office hours Click here for office hours
Instructor: Prof. Malika Zeghal, [email protected]
Teaching Fellow: Mary Elston, [email protected]
An interdisciplinary introduction to Middle Eastern Studies focusing on the modern period.
Lectures will be sequenced according to historical chronology but will be issue-based. This is not
a survey course and it will not be exhaustive in its coverage of the region. Disciplinary
approaches will include exemplary texts in History, Anthropology, Religious Studies, Literature
and Political Science. Readings will include primary and secondary sources.
This course is designed to give students a good grasp of the history of the modern Middle East,
while engaging with some of the most important issues that have resonated and still resonate in
that area of the world. The larger aim of the course is to develop students critical thinking in
dealing with issues related to the contemporary Middle East.
Required for all concentrators in The Modern Middle East. Open to all undergraduate and
graduate students. There are no prerequisites for this course.
Note: A required course for undergraduates pursuing a secondary field in modern Middle
Eastern Studies.
Requirements and Grading for Undergraduates
1- 4 in-class 15-minute quizzes (20%).
2- A short take-home midterm: one essay question to be chosen among three, no longer than 5
pages, font 12, double-spaced. We will stop reading at page 5 regardless of length! (25%) The
essay is due on October 27, by midnight.
2
3- An in-class final exam: two essay questions to be chosen among four. (Graduate students will
replace the final exam by a paper reviewing the literature on a specific issue covered in the
course) (35%).
4- Oral performance in sections (20%).
Requirements and Grading for Graduate Students
1- 4 in-class 15-minute quizzes (25%).
2- A short take-home midterm: one essay question to be chosen among three, no longer than 5
pages, font 12, double-spaced. I will stop reading at page 5 regardless of length! (25%) The
essay is due on October 27, by midnight.
3- A final paper (50%) reviewing the literature on one issue of their choice. They may rely on the
Further Readings list and expand as much as needed. The paper is to be no longer than 10
pages double-spaced, Font 12.
Available at the Coop: William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern
Middle East, Fifth Edition, Westview Press, 2013.
All other readings are available as PDFs on the course i-site.
Week 1-9/3: Introduction
Week 2: Economies in Decline: Reforming Society
M. 9/8 The Ottoman Empire
Cleveland, Chapters 3-4-5 (p. 34-94).
W. 9/10 The Issue of Decline
Rifaa Rafi al-Tahtawi, An Imam in Paris (Introduced and translated by Daniel Newman, Saqi
Books, 2011), p. 177-240.
Week 3: Economies in Decline: Reforming Society
M. 9/15 The Tanzimat: Attempts at Recentralization
Kay Kivan Karaman and Sevket Pamuk, Ottoman State Finances in European Perspective,
1500-1914, Journal of Economic History, vol. 70, no 3, September 2010, p. 593-629.
W. 9/17 Renewing Political Thought
Khayr al-din Pasha, Encyclopedia of Islam.
3
Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi, The Surest Path (1867) (Translation by Leon Carl Brown, The Surest
Path, Harvard University Press 1967), p. 65-99.
Week 4: Colonial Powers and Imperialism
M. 9/22 Colonialism and its Consequences: Post-colonial Studies
Cleveland, Chapter 6. Edward Said, Orientalism, Introduction.
W. 9/24 [QUIZ] Concrete Colonial Practices
Richard S. Fogarty, Race and War in France, John Hopkins University Press, 2008, p. 1-54
(Introduction and Reservoirs of men)
Week 5: Constitutionalism and Nationalism
M. 9/29 Constitutionalism
Cleveland, Chapter 8. Elizabeth F. Thompson, Justice Interrupted, Introduction and Chapter 1.
W. 10/1 Nationalism
Cleveland, Chapters 11-12-13
Weeks 6-7: Economic and Human Development
M. 10/6 Economic Issues: The States Size and Rents
Alan Richards et al., A Political Economy of the Middle East, The Emergence of the Public
Sector p. 179-210.
W. 10/8 [QUIZ] Women and Gender: The Debate about Feminism
Tahar Haddad, Our Woman, Chapter 8 Scenes of Married Life. Lara Deeb, An Enchanted
Modern, Gender and Public Piety in Shii Lebanon, Chapter 6, Public Piety as Womens Jihad.
M. 10/13 No Class (Columbus Day)
W. 10/15 Toward Mass Education: Cultural and Economic Issues
Taha Husayn, Al-Ayyam, Excerpt TBD.
Dale Eickelman, Mass Higher Education and the Religious Imagination in Contemporary Arab
Societies, American Ethnologist, 1992.
Week 8: Authoritarianism Explained
M. 10/20 The Political Culture Explanation
Cleveland, Chapter 10. Bernard Lewis, The Language of Political Islam, Chapters 1 and 5.
W. 10/22 Other Explanations for Authoritarianism and its Durability
Eva Bellin, The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in
Comparative Perspective, Comparative Politics, vol. 36, no 2, 2004, p. 139-157.
Cleveland, Chapter 20.
4
Week 9: Islamism and Political Islam
M. 10/27 [MIDTERM DUE] The Long View
Cleveland, Chapters 2 and 7.
W. 10/29 The Egyptian Nexus: The Muslim Brothers
Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers, Oxford University Press, Chapters 8
and 9, The Problem; The Solution.
Week 10: Islamism in the Middle East in the Twentieth Century
M. 11/3 Lecture by Professor William Granara, Title TBD
Abd al-Hakim Qasim, Rites of Assent: Two Novellas, Al-Mahdi, (1995) p. 3-63.
The Debate on the Islamists Moderation Thesis
W. 11/5 [QUIZ] Cleveland 18-19.
Mona El-Ghobashy, The Metamorphosis of the Egyptian Muslim Brothers, International
Journal of Middle East Studies, 37, 2005, 373-395.
Week 11: The Uprisings and the Arab Spring
M. 11/10 The Unemployed, the Workers, and the Protests
Cleveland, Chapter 26.
Joel Beinin, The Rise of Egypts Workers, Carnegie Papers, June 2012.
Tunisian Labor Leaders Reflect Upon Revolt, Middle East Report, 258, Spring 2011.
W. 11/12 Why did the Arab Spring Fail?
Ashraf El-Sharif, The Muslim Brotherhoods Failures, Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, July 2014.
Week 12: Elections Before and After the Arab Spring
M. 11/17 Elections under Authoritarian Regimes
Steven Heydemann Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World, The Brookings Institution,
October 2007
W. 11/19 [QUIZ] Elections and Constitution Writing in the Arab Spring: Tunisia and
Egypt
Tarek Masoud, Counting Islam, Cambridge University Press, 2014, God, Mammon and
Transition, p. 123-154.
Malika Zeghal, Competing Ways of Life: Islamism, Secularism, and Public Order in the
Tunisian Transition, Constellations, Vol. 20, Issue 2, June 2013, p. 254-274.
5
Week 13: War and Violence
M. 11/24 Cleveland Chapters 17, 22, 23.
W. 11/26 NO CLASS (Thanksgiving)
M. 12/1 The Middle East Seen Through The Clash of Civilizations.
Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations, Foreign Affairs, 1993; Roy Mottahedeh, The
Clash of Civilizations: An Islamicists Critique, Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review,
2, 1995, 1: 1-26.
Week 14: Conclusion
W. 12/3: Q&A and Conclusion
