NEHC

This course covers the period from ca. 1750 to the present, focusing on Western military, economic, and ideological encroachment; the impact of such ideas as nationalism and liberalism; efforts at reform in the Islamic states; the emergence of the "modern" Middle East after World War I; the struggle for liberation from Western colonial and imperial control; the Middle Eastern states in the cold war era; and local and regional conflicts.

This course is designed for graduate or upper-level undergraduate students interested in the social history of the Mediterranean, late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early modernity. We will have survey and explore the history of urban classes, guilds, religious communities, waqf and urbanism, everyday life, disasters and celebrations in “Islamic” cities. The course will begin by examining the primary sources on the subject. We will also cover a growing corpus of secondary sources on life in Islamic cities. Among the questions we will ask are what are the forces of growth and decline of Islamic cities, what groups and classes of people lived in cities, what did cityscapes look like and what kinds of businesses and concerns occupied people’s daily lives.

The course introduces students to the first ‘empires’ in the ancient Middle East. We will study the earliest attempts under both Sumerian and Akkadian leadership at unifying the old Sumerian city states in what is today southern Iraq in the mid-third millennium BCE. Our focus will then be on the two successful empires that arose from these attempts, namely the one founded by Sargon of Akkade in ca. 2300 BCE and the one ruled by the Third Dynasty of Ur from 2092–2003 BCE. While exploring a rich variety of sources, both textual and from archaeological contexts, we will pay particular attention to understanding expansionist efforts, strategies of empire building, the establishment of a centralized state bureaucracy, ideologies of kingship, ethnicity and identity, as well as rebellions against the new political system and theories about why these early empires began to crumble after only a few generations. Since these new forms of dominion were tested and developed for the first time in this formative period and kings of these dynasties acquired a special status in Mesopotamian cultural memory, this course provides a solid base for understanding the later development of ancient Middle Eastern history but can also be studied for the sake of understanding early empire formation.

This course will examine the concept and definition of empire and the practices of imperial control through a case study of Mesopotamia’s best-known empire, the Neo-Assyrian (first half of the 1st millennium BCE). At its peak, the Assyrians ruled a vast area covering most of modern Iraq and Syria, plus parts of Iran, Turkey and the Levant, with aspirations to control Egypt. The gradual expansion of this empire from late 2nd millennium BCE beginnings and its extremely rapid collapse in ca. 612 BCE provide an excellent example of the tensions within trajectories of empire. The course themes include warfare and political strategies, identity and ethnicity, imperial bureaucracy, and the practical and ideological purposes of infrastructure building. Evidence examined will include texts (in translation) and the archaeological record at various scales, from settlements through artworks. We will also examine paradoxes, such as the contrast between textual claims of hegemony and limited archaeological evidence for this, and the power of visual propaganda versus its select audience.

The goal of this class is to get an overview of Hittite literature, as “defined” by the Hittites themselves, in the wider historical-cultural context of the Ancient Near East. Some of the most important questions we can ask ourselves in reading ancient texts are: why were they written down, why were they kept, for whom were they intended, and what do the answers to these questions (apart from the primary content of the texts themselves) tell us about — in our case — Hittite society?

Prior knowledge of the Middle East not required. This course aims to facilitate a general understanding of some key factors that have shaped life in this region, with primary emphasis on modern conditions and their background, and to provide exposure to some of the region's rich cultural diversity. This course can serve as a basis for the further study of the history, politics, and civilizations of the Middle East.

In consultation with a faculty research adviser and with consent of the Director of Undergraduate Studies, students devote the equivalent of a one-quarter course to the preparation of their Research Project. Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form. Please indicate that you wish to register for NEHC 29995 Section 01 with the Director of Undergraduate Studies.

This course offers a critical appraisal of the concepts of empire and imperialism in the historiography of ancient Mesopotamia and Iran to address political formations that developed (and vanished) during the first millennium BCE, with a focus on the Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Achaemenid empires. This seminar will explore the nature of power, control, and resource management in these early empires, and how they served as the blueprint for the later imperial formations of Classical and Late Antiquity. Students will address a substantial part of Mesopotamian and Iranian history and study in depth some key historiography issues for the history of Antiquity. Primary documents will be read in translation and the course has no ancient language requirements. However, some readings of secondary literature in common academic languages (especially French and German) are to be expected. Students will be asked to present the readings and participate in classroom discussions; write a book review; and conduct a personal research on a topic of their choice (midterm annotated bibliography and research proposal; final essay).

This course will introduce students to a number of important topics in Eighteenth and nineteenth century Ottoman history, such as the nature of the great local notables, the growing importance of proteges, and the bureaucratic reform.

This course will examine the development of the Turkish state following WWI including questions of economy, institutions, and identity formation. The first quarter make be taken as a free-standing colloquium, or students may take both quarters and produce a research paper.