Winter

In the second quarter we focus on research topics for students writing the seminar paper.

NEHC 30019. Mesopotamian Law (= LLSO 20019; SIGN 26002). Ancient Mesopotamia -- the home of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians who wrote in cuneiform script on durable clay tablets -- was the locus of many of history’s “firsts.” No development, however, may be as important as the formations of legal systems and legal principles revealed in contracts, trial records, and law collections (“codes”), among which “The Laws of Hammurabi” (r. 1792-1750 BC) stands as most important for understanding subsequent legal practice and thought of Mesopotamia’s cultural heirs in the Middle East and Europe until today. This course will explore the rich source materials of the Laws and relevant judicial and administration documents (all in English translations) to investigate topics of legal, social, and economic practice including family formation and dissolution, crime and punishment (sympathetic or talionic “eye for an eye,” pecuniary, corporal), and procedure (contracts, trials, ordeals). M. Roth. Winter 2018.

The class explores the history of Iraq during the years 1917-2015. We will discuss the rise of the Iraqi nation state, Iraqi and Pan-Arab nationalism, and Iraqi authoritarianism. The class will focus on the unique histories of particular group in Iraqi society; religious groups (Shiis, Sunnis, Jews), ethnic groups (especially Kurds), classes (the urban poor, the educated middle classes, the landed and tribal elites), Iraqi women, and Iraqi tribesmen. Other classes will explore the ideologies that became prominent in the Iraqi public sphere, from communism to Islamic radicalism. We will likewise discuss how colonialism and imperialism shaped major trends in Iraqi history. The reading materials for the class are based on a combination of primary and secondary sources: we will read together Iraqi novels, memoirs and poems (in translation), as well as British and American diplomatic documents about to Iraq.

The class studies the ways in which modern archaeology shaped discourses in the Middle East regarding nationalism, colonialism, culture, and modernity; we will likewise explore the rise of the discipline in Europe and the United States. We will begin our class studying Napoleon's occupation of Egypt (1798), and the archaeological activities it inspired and end our discussions with very recent debates about cultural heritage, pertinent to the Iraq War and the battle against the Islamic State. Great emphasis in the class will be placed on how Arab, Turkish, Iranian and Zionist national movements appropriated the ancient past in order to make modern claims about territoriality and ethnicity.

Course examines responses to the Mongol destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in 1258 and the background to formation of regional Muslim empires. Topics include the opening of confessional boundaries; Ibn Arabi, Ibn Taymiyya, and Ibn Khaldun; the development of alternative spiritualities, mysticism, and messianism in the fifteenth century; transconfessionalism, antinomianism, and the articulation of sacral sovereignties in the sixteenth century. Readings will be in English, though some acquaintance with primary languages (Arabic, French, German, Greek, Latin, Spanish, or Turkish) is desirable.

<p>Survey of Islamic thought and literature during the “middle periods,” from 950 to 1750 C.E., stretching across a broad geographic area, from Morocco and Iberia to the Maldives and India, and even into the New World. The course engages with a broad selection of primary texts in English translation, and various visual, aural and material artifacts, contextualizing them through lectures, secondary readings and discussion. We explore the notion of Islamicate culture(s) and civilization in its many facets – the intellectual milieu; literary, artistic and musical production; political, social, scientific, philosophical and theological thought; concepts of the heroic, the beautiful, the good, the poetic; piety, devotion and spirituality; religious, educational, governmental, commercial and social institutions; geographic, ethnic, confessional, gender, social and spatial constructs. In brief, how did noteworthy Muslims at various points and places think through questions of life & death, man & God, faith & belief, the sacred & the profane, law & ethics, tradition vs. innovation, power & politics, class & gender, self & other? How did they think about and wage war, make love, eat & drink, tell stories, educate their youth, preserve the past, imagine the future, etc.?</p><p>This sequence explores the thought and literature of the Islamic world from the coming of Islam in the seventh century C.E. through the development and spread of its civilization in the medieval period and into the modern world. Including historical framework to establish chronology and geography, the course focuses on key aspects of Islamic intellectual history: scripture, law, theology, philosophy, literature, mysticism, political thought, historical writing, and archaeology. In addition to lectures and secondary background readings, students read and discuss samples of key primary texts, with a view to exploring Islamic civilization in the direct voices of the people who participated in creating it. All readings are in English translation. No prior background in the subject is required. This course sequence meets the general education requirement in civilization studies.</p>

This sequence surveys the main trends in the political history of the Islamic world, with some attention to economic, social, and intellectual history. This course covers the period from ca. 1100 to 1750, including the arrival of the steppe peoples (Turks and Mongols), the Mongol successor states, and the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria. We also study the foundation of the great Islamic regional empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Moghuls.

Central Asia Past and Present serves as a multi-disciplinary course, spanning anthropology, history and political science. This course introduces students to the fluid, political-geographic concept of Central Asia as well as to the historical and cultural dimensions of this particular and oft-redefined world.  My understanding of Central Asia comes from studies of ex-Soviet Central Asia, which includes five independent countries (since 1991) within central Eurasia--the former U.S.S.R. Thus the course encompasses Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in addition to parts of northern Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and western China (Xinjiang/Sinkiang).  Students will familiarize themselves with universal and divergent factors among the Central Asian peoples based on phenomena such as human migrations, cross-cultural influences, historical events, and the economic organization of peoples based on local ecology and natural boundaries. Working together and as individuals, we will study maps and atlases to gain a fuller understanding of historical movements and settlements of the Central Asian peoples.  In addition to lectures and book discussions, I will present photographs, slides, and video from fieldwork in Central Asia as well as professional documentary and art films about the societies of this area.