2021-2022

Why did the Islamic Revolution take place? What were its causes? Iran was the site of two of the most important revolutions in the Middle East in the 20th century: the Constitutional (1905-1911) and Islamic Revolutions (1979). What was the historical relationship between them? This course is intended to answer these questions by exploring the history of Iran from late Qajar period until the early 1980s. We will examine the complex socio-economic and religio-political developments such as the Tobacco Protest, oil nationalization and student movements. We will emphasize long-term changes with a particular attention to the diverse actors and influences of the revolutions (tribes, landowners, foreign governments, merchants, religious scholars, political dissidents, urban poor, intellectuals). We will use a wide swath of primary sources including films, comic books, posters, footages and poems. No prior background in the subject is required.

This course will explore how parts of the modern Middle East confronted questions and definitions of race and gender that were often first defined in the west. Organized thematically and covering a region that spans from North Africa to Iran, we will use the analytics of race and gender in an intersecting way to explore topics in the Middle East such as: colonialism, slavery, Arab Nationalism, Zionism, whiteness, racism, eugenics and scientific racism, and global solidarity movements. In so doing, our course will reveal that race is an operative category in the study of Middle East history, the historical racial logics operating in various Middle Eastern countries, and how race and gender intersect at the site of individual as well as the effects of this. This course is designed for anyone interested in race theory, gender theory, intersectionality, and Middle East history. By the end of this course, students will have the tools to think in a gendered and raced multidimensional way about aspects of Middle East history that do not often receive such an intersectional treatment. Additionally, they will develop the methodological tools to discern local race and gender logics that might be different than what they’re most familiar with. Finally, through coming to understand their relationship to the knowledge of our course, students will also be able to use the course as a springboard for continued learning in other courses that treat race, gender, and the Middle East.

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.

Although Egyptians demonstrated use of sophisticated mathematics, including geometry, already in the Old Kingdom, the oldest preserved mathematical texts date from the Middle Kingdom. In this course we will read sections of several of these MK hieratic texts, including problems involving a wide range of math skills and applications; we will then read portions of the so-called Demotic mathematical papyri to see how Egyptian math evolved into the Ptolemaic period. No special background is required although comfort with numbers will be an asset

For most of the duration of the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), the ancient Egyptians were able to establish a vast empire and becoming one of the key powers within the Near East. This course will investigate in detail the development of Egyptian foreign policies and military expansion which affected parts of the Near East and Nubia. We will examine and discuss topics such as ideology, imperial identity, political struggle and motivation for conquest and control of wider regions surrounding the Egyptian state as well as the relationship with other powers and their perspective on Egyptian rulers as for example described in the Amarna letters.

Building on the basics of grammar, vocabulary, and orthographic styles learned in EGPT 20210, this course focuses on the reading and analysis of Late Egyptian texts from the various genres.

This course provides an introduction to the hieroglyphic writing system, vocabulary and grammar of Old Egyptian, the phase of the Egyptian language used during the Old Kingdom (circa 2686-2181 BCE). It also provides an introduction to the culture and society of Egypt's 'Pyramid Age' through a close reading of monumental texts from private tombs, royal and private stelae, administrative decrees, economic documents, and Pyramid texts. Some attention is given to Old Egyptian texts written in cursive Hieratic.

This course continues an introduction to ancient Egyptian culture and society through a close reading of its 'classic' literature from the Middle Kingdom (circa 2025-1773 BCE) and beyond, until the disappearance of hieroglyphs over two thousand years later.

This course employs English translations of ancient Egyptian literary texts to explore the genres, conventions and techniques of ancient Egyptian literature. Discussions of texts examine how the ancient Egyptians conceptualized and constructed their equivalent of literature, as well as the fuzzy boundaries and subtle interplay between autobiography, history, myth, and fiction.

This course introduces the cursive literary and administrative script of Middle Egyptian (corresponding to the Middle Kingdom period in Egypt) and is intended to provide familiarity with a variety of texts written in hieratic (e.g., literary tales, religious compositions, wisdom literature, letters, accounts, graffiti).