NMC379H1

Capital, Technology, and Utopia in the Modern Middle East

How does the workings of capital intersect with technological innovation and political visions in the modern Middle East? This course approaches this question through critical reading in the histories of capitalism, crisis, science, politics, and intersections between cultural history and technology studies using the Middle East as a starting point for the study of global phenomena. We will examine the ways in which constructions like race and ethnicity, gender, and the human/non-human divide have mediated the social and spatial expansion of capital in the region, especially through technological infrastructure and utopias between the late 18th and the 21st centuries.