History, Urbanity, and Landscape in the Contemporary Middle East

3 credits · Undergraduate

How are cities, towns and landscapes interconnected in the postcolonial present? How do histories of imperialism and colonialism leave imprints on landscapes, built environments and the connections between them? This course explores these questions through three weeks of lived experience in contemporary Jordan. Jordan is an ideal space to critically analyze the postcolonial nation state as a political form of landscape-making from the capital city to secondary cities to their coastal and interior hinterlands. Studies will discuss, journal and critically analyze their experience of moving over these landscapes, with journeys through rural and semi-urban landscapes constituting sites of inquiry as much as destinations.