POLS 354: History and Politics of the Middle East

This course offers an exploration of the ways in which two sets of transnational forces have together shaped the politics of the Middle East over the past four decades: A) the resurgence of “political Islam” within the wider Muslim world and B) the increasingly complex and direct intervention of the United States and other external powers in the region. Focal points include legacies of regional empires (Islamic; Ottoman; Safavid; etc.) and of European colonialism; the evolution of the Israeli-Arab/Palestinian conflict; the Iranian Revolution; Sunni-Shiite sectarian tensions/rivalries (centered around a Saudi-Iranian fulcrum since 1979); Iraq’s recurrent slides toward war; the anti-authoritarian struggles of the Arab Spring (particularly in Tunisia and Egypt); Syria’s violent fragmentation (including the rise of ISIS as well as a wide array of outside interventions by self-serving nation-states) and 21st-century Turkey under Erdogan’s “moderate” version of political Islam. Along the way we will endeavor to identify and to appreciate both key overarching patterns that are widely shared throughout the Middle East and important differences that mark the region’s distinct national and sub-national communities.