Theory and Method in Near Eastern Studies

Catalog description

This course will explore major themes and methods in Near(/Middle) Eastern Studies and provide you with an overview of a range of different approaches to the study of the Middle East. We begin by exploring the establishment of the field of area studies: a significant tool of the imperial apparatus, Orientalism has shaped and continues to shape what is studied in the Middle East, which questions are asked and who gets to ask them. After thinking for several weeks about how Western/European categories have shaped both disciplinary boundaries and the ways in which scholars write about their objects of study, we will move on to read scholarship that speaks to important methodological and theoretical disciplines, including literary studies, social history, anthropology, the history of medicine, sexuality and gender studies, disability studies and the study of the body.