Revolutions in MENA

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Since 1900, the Middle East has been one of the most revolutionary regions of the world. This course will explore the drivers, dynamics, and patterns of these revolutions. It will introduce students to some of the main questions related to revolutions: why do they occur? Why do they succeed? What types of change do they bring about? How do they differ in nature and form? In exploring these questions, we will consider revolutions from different eras and regions, including the constitutional revolutions of the early 20th century, the independence and social revolutions of the mid-20th century, and the democratic revolutions of 2011 that came to be known as the Arab Spring. We will also hone in on certain especially well-studied cases, like the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the Egyptian revolution of 2011, considering different perspectives and approaches to analyzing these cases. And we will engage with pioneering works of revolution theory, exploring the extent to which these theories can help us to make sense of these different revolutionary waves. Finally, students will each become experts on their own case of revolution, which will be the topic of a final research paper and also the basis for various mid-semester assignments in which we apply various concepts and theories from course readings.