Imagining the East: The History & Politics of Middle East Studies

3 units

How do we know Muslim women need gender equality? How do we know minorities in the Middle East suffer from religious persecution, and that religious freedom is the solution? How do we know promoting human rights is a universal good? How do we know development aid improves the lives of Palestinian or Syrian refugees? Why do we need so many US military bases in the Arab Gulf? In this class, we consider the history and politics behind the answers to these kinds of questions. To do so, we examine the field of Middle East Studies in the United States, historically and today, and its role in the production of expert knowledge about the region. After learning foundational theories around knowledge production, we consider the history of US foreign policy and analyze how certain theories of the Middle East became common sense notions at the expense of other possibilities. We then investigate the history and politics of universal concepts and their promotion in the region such as human rights, gender equality, and religious freedom.