Zionism, Israel, Palestine

Catalog description

For more than a century, the land of Israel/Palestine has been a site of contestation and resistance. Local, regional, and global dynamics have shaped the modern history of this place and its people, as well as a confluence of colonial, national, and religious factors. Beginning in the nineteenth century and drawing on both influential works of scholarship and newer directions and approaches, this course surveys topics of ongoing historiographic discussion in the entangled histories of Zionism, the formation of the Israeli state, and the Palestinian Nakba. Conflicting visions of the land’s political future invariably rely on divergent accounts of its past, and historians have done much to shape perceptions of what is commonly described as the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Therefore, an additional aim of this course is to consider how political commitments inform historical methodology, or how the present shapes the past as much as the past shapes the present. Satisfies History major and minor requirement. Satisfies Historical Thought requirement.