Understanding the Arab World

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

What is the Arab world and what forces shape how we understand it? The course begins with this central question of how knowledge has historically been produced about the “Arab World” and the “Middle East” (or SWANA = Southwest Asia and North Africa) more broadly. We will examine the political and ideological forces that inform research agendas, questions and answers, as well as critiques of dominant modes of analysis. Then we shift to reading about key themes such as: culture, race, gender, development, education. For the thematic part of the course, we will draw on a variety of interdisciplinary readings. Our analysis of these readings will be attuned to the ways in which powerful structures (national, global, local; political, economic; cultural, social) shape human experience, and how people respond to, resist, embrace, transform these structures.