NMC278H1

Modern Middle East: A Historical Introduction

Spanning the early nineteenth century to the present, this course examines how state-building, reform, imperialism, nationalism, capitalism, and mass politics reshaped Arabic-speaking societies alongside Ottoman/Turkish and Iranian worlds. We situate local histories within global currents such as European empires, oil, migration, the Arab–Israeli wars, and the Cold War, asking how authority, community, and citizenship were made and contested. Attending to borderlands and diasporas, we also foreground Armenians, Kurds, Azeris, Jewish communities, and Greeks, tracing the entangled histories of genocide, displacement, and memory that continue to shape the region’s intellectual and political landscape. Organized chronologically around weekly themes—imperial reform, colonial rule, sectarianism, resistance, public culture, technocracy, and citizenship—the course integrates primary sources, maps, images, and short films. In later weeks, we consider the politics of representation and violence in the age of globalization and the “war on terror.” Students build historical and media literacy, practice comparative analysis, and reflect critically on the category “Middle East”: what counts as the region, and what lies beyond its conventional boundaries.