Featured Elective Courses

MES 1111 The Modern Middle East: Struggles for Power and Justice
Tuesday, Thursday 2:30pm-3:50pm
Professor: Alex Winder

This course is an introduction to the modern Middle East, spanning from the 18th century to the present. It focuses on struggles—individual and collective—for power and justice. At times, these struggles overlap: when groups seek to overthrow the existing authority and install a more just one in its place. Other times, they diverge: when groups or individuals seize power for their own interests, or seek justice by reforming the existing order (rather than toppling it). These struggles illuminate the shifting material and ideological conditions within the Middle East over the past three centuries or so: in other words, over what are people struggling, and why? By focusing on struggles for power and justice, this course emphasizes the Middle East as a dynamic region shaped by numerous stakeholders and challengers, rather than a space with an essential or homogenous character.

*MES 1171 Ethics and Politics of Intimacy in the Middle East
Time TBD
Professor: Mehrdad Babadi

Intimacy is often a synonym for proximate, close relations, connected with the interior and the personal: sexual and romantic relations. It is associated with private embodied life, the realm of psychology, desires and emotions. Intimacy as an analytical concept in social sciences draws on these micro-level (private) meanings, but also introduces macro-level (public) socio-economic, cultural, and political dimensions, including power relations. This course explores the ethics and politics of intimacy in contemporary Middle Eastern societies. We examine these transformations in a comparative manner, including various countries (Afghanistan, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, UAE, etc.), though Iran will be our main geographical focus. We will discuss marriage, family, kinship, gender, and sexuality and evaluate the impact of modernity, globalization, capitalism, and individualism on shifting notions of romantic love and companionate marriage in Muslim societies.

MES 1221 Palestine: A Comparative Ethnic Studies Approach
Wednesday, 3pm-5:30pm
Professor: Loubna Qutami

This course examines Palestine and the Palestinians through interdisciplinary ethnic studies optics and frameworks. The course begins by examining the Palestinian struggle from a historical and geographically contextual lens. It then engages the question of Palestine from an ethnic studies approach centering theories and ideas on indigenous sovereignty; transnational social movements; racial carcerality; sexual and gender politics, displacement and refugee-hood; apartheid and international law. We will also examine Palestinian relationships with communities and causes of the global South in the past and present. Students with background training in Middle East Studies, ethnic studies, and/or gender and sexuality studies are especially encouraged to enroll in this course. Students interested in interdisciplinary and intersectional approaches to Middle East and ethnic studies are also encouraged to enroll.

MES 1198 Reflections on "The Jewish Question"
Monday, 3:00 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.
Professor: Adi Ophir

In the mid-19th century, “the Jewish Question” became a galvanizing topic of debate among European thinkers with diverse political and theological orientations. In the wake of the French Revolution, and in an era of “questions” of minorities of all kinds, kindled by ideas of emancipation and equality, “the Jewish Question” centered on promoting or blocking Jewish “assimilation” and was driven by interpretations of Jewish otherness, the possibility of its transformation, and its meaning as a metonym for/a symptom of a secularized civil society. The goal of this seminar is to become acquainted with the history of “the Jewish Question” to reframe it for the contemporary historical moment; to do so without adopting the terms of the 19th century’s Question; and to understand the ways and meaning of asking “the Question” today without necessarily offering it any "solutions."
RPP

ASYR 1100 Imagining the Gods: Myths and Myth-making in Ancient Mesopotamia
Tuesday, Thursday 10:30am-11:50am
Professor: Matthew Rutz

Creation, the Flood, the Tower of Babel--well-known myths such as these have their origins in ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Using both ancient texts in translatioin and archaeology, this course will explore categories of Mesopotamian culture labeled "myth" and "religion" (roughly 3300-300 BCE), critically examining the ancient evidence as well as various modern interpretations. Topics will include myths of creation and the flood, prophecy and divination, death and the afterlife, ritual, kingship, combat myths and apocalypses, the nature and expression of ancient religious experience, and representations of the divine. There are no prerequisites.

MCM 1504R Iranian Cinema
Wednesday, 3:00 p.m – 5:30 p.m.
Professor: Joan Copjec

The emergence in the 1990s of Iranian cinema onto the world stage caught many by surprise. This cinema has, however, had a long and illustrious history. While attempting to provide an historical survey of these films, we will focus primarily on those produced in the last two decades. We will pay close attention to cinematic form but will also examine the ways the films intersect with cultural-political events, including the Revolution and the subsequent Islamicization of the culture, the institutionalization of the “modesty system,” and the alteration of divorce laws.

RELS 2400D Islamic Pasts and Futures
Thursday, 4:00 p.m.– 6:30 p.m.
Professor: Shahzad Bashir

A critical appraisal of the field of Islamic studies in light of conceptual issues pertaining to history, society, and religion. We will begin by examining viewpoints old and new, deliberately transgressing geographical boundaries and binaries that divide matters into primary/secondary, premodern/modern, Muslim/non-Muslim, and textual/material sources. Students will have extensive opportunity to workshop their ideas for current and future work in their areas of sub- specialization. Intended for graduate students, with time devoted to examining materials in original languages relevant for those enrolled.

*This course is not yet listed on Courses@Brown.

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