Modern Middle East: Themes in Current Re

This course is open to Ph.D. students and advanced M.A. students conducting research on aspects of the modern, culture, politics, and history of the Middle East and adjacent regions. Its temporal focus is the three centuries from roughly the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, but those whose research deals with other periods are welcome to participate. The course has three aims. The first is to provide an opportunity to read and engage with some of the more recent scholarship in the field, especially work published in the last ten years, organized around several current academic debates. The second is to provide a seminar in which those preparing a master’s paper, M.Phil. examination list, or Ph.D. prospectus, or a term paper intended for conference presentation or publication, can develop and present a draft of their work. We will choose readings to accompany each paper, focusing on recent scholarship that informs or extends the issues addressed in the research. The course will enable students to clarify and test the questions that shape their work and better situate them within current scholarship. The third aim is to train students in the art of framing questions and shaping debate for an advanced, reading-intensive graduate-level seminar. The course is intended primarily for MESAAS students. Those from other departments are welcome but require the permission of the instructor to enroll.