Bordering the Middle East: Imperial State-building and its Legacies

In this course, students will learn about the bordering of the Middle East, as a regional whole, and in the particulars of individual nation-state boundaries, in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will study ideas about North African and Southwest Asian geography, history, and culture, and their use, by Ottoman, British, and French imperial actors engaged in creating and enforcing political boundaries. We will also learn about the impacts of these borders on the lives of the bordered in the past and present.