General Information
| Course Code | L_GWBAGES216 |
|---|---|
| Credits | 6 EC |
| Period | P4 |
| Course Level | 200 |
| Language of Tuition | English |
| Faculty | Faculty of Humanities |
| Course Coordinator | dr. Y. Saramifar |
| Examiner | dr. Y. Saramifar |
| Teaching Staff |
dr. Y. Saramifar |
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Part of programme(s)
Bachelor
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Practical Information
You need to register for this course yourself. The (de)registration deadlines can be found on VU.nl
| Teaching Methods | Seminar |
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Target audiences
This course is also available as:
Course Objective
Students can:
- demonstrate historical-political trajectories that constitute contemporary Middle East,
- analytically debate Orientalism and engage with misrepresentations of the Middle East through works of revolutionary/social justice-oriented thinkers from Nazik Al-Abid, Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi to Edward Said and from the Middle East.
- define the notion of Empire as a mode of persistent domination that remains in effect in the Middle East.
Course Content
In the midst of what ICJ called a plausible genocide in Gaza, some in the Global North said, 'the situation in the Middle East should not divide us'; however, the question remains: what and where is this Middle East? This course addresses these questions by diving into the Middle East's historiographies, histories and memories to open up its political-historical construction. The course discusses how past and present influence the armed conflicts in the Middle East and how historiographies have shaped the dominant imagination of the Global North about the peoples of the Middle East.
This course unpacks the notion of Empire and Dispossession through revolutionary thinkers whose criticism of colonialism shaped colonial struggles against French and British mandates in the Middle East and their legacy have enabled resistance against Middle Eastern authoritarian regimes and also Israel as the ongoing colonial settler project. Furthermore, it shows Empire is mode of persistent domination that impacts of decolonized nations through cultural framing, Racialisations and border regimes.
This course engages with Middle Eastern thinkers such as Nazik Al-Abid, Abdul Rahman Al-Kawakibi to Edward Said to introduce Orientalism and Islamophobic framing of Muslims and peoples of the contemporary Middle East. The course also discusses Racism and Aryanism within the Middle East (the case of Iran), and it ends by engaging the cultural politics of images, visuals, aesthetics and objects in and from the Middle East.
This course operates through academic dialogues that begin from the point of view of dispossessed and colonised peoples such as Palestinians and engages with literature that radically criticised and dismantled perspectives of the Dominant.
Additional Information Teaching Methods
This course partially uses the flipping classroom method, which means students receive content in advance and discuss it in class during group discussions or in conversations with the teacher. Attendance is mandatory, and students missing two lectures will be given extra assignments and tasks to compensate for their absence. Students missing three lectures will not be allowed to finish the course.
Method of Assessment
Students will deliver three assignments: 10% (a freestyle essay on historical visual representations of the Middle East), 45% (an essay introducing one of the key revolutionary critical and social justice-oriented thinkers of the Middle East), and 45% (a final paper/essay or an open book exam). The overall word count of assessments (min 4000 words and max 5000 words)
Literature
Please refer to the course manual
Recommended background knowledge
Students are recommended to familiarise themselves with news outlets such as Aljazeera International, the map of the Middle East and sectarian differences in Islam.