NEHC

Required of fourth-year students who are majoring in NELC. This is a workshop course designed to survey the fields represented by NELC and to assist students in researching andcompleting their Research Project. Students must get a Reading and Research form from their College Adviser and complete the form in order to be registered. Signatures are needed from the adviser and Director of Undergraduate Studies. Please indicate on the form that you wish to register for NEHC 29899 Section 01.

Media are commonly viewed as catalysts of social change, particularly in reference to recent uprisings in the Middle East. This course will consider how scholars have assessed the relationship between media and social change from the early diffusion of mass communication in the mid-twentieth century to the contemporary world of social media.

The American Muslim community hails from all corners of the globe, and represents a diverse mix of ethnic groups, socio-economic backgrounds, political persuasions, and theological positions. American Islam is older than the nation itself, and Muslims have contributed to the American project throughout its history. Today, the United States represents one unique node in a complex, global Muslim world, with deep and active relationships connecting the United States to the historic centers of Muslim life. Conspicuously religious Muslims also occupy greater positions of power and visibility across American society, from the halls of Congress to the comedy club stage. This course will provide a historically-informed, globally-inflected exploration of contemporary American Islam. Students will engage primary texts of American Muslim life and consider them within social, cultural, and historical context.

Media are increasingly integrated into contemporary life. As in the past, we consume media—watching movies and television, listening to music and podcasts, and following influencers on social media. However, these passive activities now overlap with media production, participation, and commentary. For Muslims negotiating identity in diverse global society, media figure into representation and self-representation in complex, often subtle, ways. Intersecting with the family, mosque, community, and other core social institutions, media play a central role in contemporary Muslim experience. This class will examine religious media, i.e. those branded as “Islamic” in some fashion, such as television programs on Islamic law, or social media content with explicit religious commitments and claims to authority. It will also consider how Islam has been represented in popular culture, and the ways Muslims have related to those constructions of their faith. However, this dichotomy of religious and popular media no longer holds with Muslim-oriented television shows like Ramy, Ms. Marvel, the integration of Islam into popular American entertainment from Jack Ryan to Mr. Robot, and the complex engagement with religion in media across the historically Muslim world.

World War I in the Ottoman Empire. This course will examine WWI in in the Ottoman Empire broadly, considering social, economic, and military aspects of the conflict and with attention to the wartime experience for those at the front and on the home front. This is a two-quarter seminar, where the first quarter can be taken independently as a colloquium-style course for credit.