Featured Elective Courses

MES 1150 Labor and the Long Downturn in the Middle East
Tue., Thu., 2:30 p.m.-3:50 p.m.
Professor: Paul Kohlbry

This course examines the question of labor in the contemporary Middle East. The 1970s saw a global economy defined increasingly by deindustrialization, intensified competition, financialization, and squeezes on profitably. For workers, these changes meant that technological development, agrarian change, debt, and increasing precarity have transformed who works, where they work, and the sorts of politics that work (or its absence) gives rise to. This course examines these wider concerns within the context of the Middle East. Through a focus on social history and ethnographic accounts, it illuminates the ways different groups of workers experience and grapple with these broader transformations.
WRIT
DIAP

MES 1170 Iranian Art: Sites and Sights 
Tue., 4:00-6:30 p.m.
Professor: Samine Tabatabaei

This course introduces students to the modern and contemporary history of art in Iran, including architecture, visual art, cinema, theatre, and politics. It starts with the transition from the Qajar period (1781-1925) and its visual culture to the modern 20th-century nation-state, addressing; processes of urbanization; spread of modern technologies; revolutionary sentiment of 1979; displacement and formation of diasporic communities after the Islamic revolution; and the emergence of Internet technology in the 21st century. This historical backdrop informs investigation into artistic milieus, platforms, and the ever-changing notion of creativity. Course readings consist of excerpts from primary sources in addition to textbook assignments.
DIAP

MES 1250 Palestinians and Kurds: The Condition of Statelessness
Wed., 3:00-5:30 p.m.
Professors: Adi Ophir & Meltem Toksoz

This seminar seeks to achieve three interrelated goals: to introduce students to the condition of statelessness experienced by two ethnic groups in the Middle East, the Kurdish and Palestinian peoples; to examine the contours and potency of, and the problematics associated with, the concept of statelessness; and to offer the production and management of statelessness as a viable perspective for the study of the modern Middle East. We look for analogies and distinctions between the two cases, and qualify and multiply the condition of statelessness for each, guided by categories of Nation, State, Nationalism, Colonization, Settler Colonialism, Citizenship, and Precariousness.
WRIT
DIAP

MES 1270 Histories of Watching and Surveying
Mon., 3:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m.
Professor: Samine Tabatabaei

How are surveillance practices historically embedded in social fabric? How have surveillance technologies altered social life throughout history? This course explores these questions by mapping the complex ways that technologies and societies interact to produce security, fear, control, and vulnerability. Some of the areas covered include close-circuit television (CCTV) in public and quasi-public spaces, biometric technologies on the border, and a host of monitoring technologies in cyberspaces, workplaces, and the home. Readings are drawn from the critical theories in visual culture, science-fiction, and popular media.
WRIT
DIAP