IAFF 6378 Conflict and Humanitarian Crises

Basma Alloush

Tue 7:10 – 9:00 PM

Protracted conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have increased the vulnerability of millions of people and created staggering levels of humanitarian need. The effects of conflict are compounded by recurring and extreme weather conditions, water scarcity, and the COVID-19 pandemic. These shocks have combined to exacerbate political and economic instability, increased rates of poverty, hunger, and inequality and created the conditions for prolonged humanitarian crises and massive migration and internal displacement. This course will examine the historical, political, economic and environmental root causes of humanitarian crises in the MENA region and explore the relationship between conflict and humanitarian need and suffering in Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq among other countries. With a focus on humanitarian policy and programming, the course will consider the role of the state, non-state actors, and international and regional organizations in responding to crisis and conflict; and how security challenges, counterterrorism laws and sanctions and geopolitical interests affect humanitarian access. Taught Spring 2023.

Tue 7:10 – 9:00 PM

IAFF 6378 US Foreign Policy in the Middle East

Charles Dunne

Tue 5:10 – 7:00 PM

The United States has been the most powerful external actor in the Middle East and North Africa for much of the last 70 years, defending and advancing what generations of US policymakers have identified as vital national interests. Today, however, most Americans, and even the American government itself, seem to have grown weary of wars, crises, and expensive military commitments in the region. Iraq, Afghanistan, and the intractable Arab-Israeli peace process—not to mention the perception of numerous American policy failures—all have led successive US administrations to the conclusion that the United States should pare its involvement and focus its attention elsewhere. But is this the right course of action? When US attention lapses, emergencies in the region have a way of drawing America back in. It’s undoubtedly an arena of competing interests involving the United States, Russia and China, which increasingly bears implications for US global policy. Taught from a practitioner’s viewpoint, this course will focus on the history of and present-day rationale for US engagement in the region; we will have active class discussions on current developments, debate opposing views, and hold a simulation that will pull these strands together in a policymaking exercise with real-world implications. At the end of the course, you’ll know what the US is doing there and why it matters. Taught Spring 2023.

Tue 5:10 – 7:00 PM

ANTH 6707 Making and Living Change in the Middle East: Anthropological Perspectives

Ilana Feldman

Tue 5:10 – 7:00 PM

This course is an anthropological exploration of political and social change in the Middle East. We will consider how people work to make change in their communities, countries, and world and how they live with change as a dynamic process that they may not have sought and certainly do not control. In the first part of the course, we will work to build a conceptual vocabulary through which to consider the varied dynamics of political and social change in the region. We will consider temporality, scale, political imaginaries, and structural blockages in order to better understand how people experience change as a process, goal, and, sometimes, disappointment. When we turn to ethnographies on the Middle East, our themes will include: activism, protest, revolution, changing environments, and the aftermath of change. Taught Spring 2023.

Tue 5:10 – 7:00 PM

IAFF 6378 Arabic Dialects: North African

Khalil Derbel

Mon 2:20 – 3:35 PM

Wed 2:20 – 3:35 PM

This course helps students build proficiency in and command of the Moroccan dialect. The course’s focus is developing communicative functions in Moroccan Arabic and increasing cultural competency in Moroccan culture. Prerequisite Beginning Arabic II (ARAB 1002) or equivalent. Taught Spring 2023.

Mon 2:20 – 3:35 PM

Wed 2:20 – 3:35 PM

IAFF 6378 Arabic for Humanitarian Assistance and International Development

Khalil Derbel

Wed 5:10 – 7:00 PM

This course equips students with the necessary linguistic and cultural tools to pursue successful careers in the Foreign Service, public sector, private or international organizations specializing in humanitarian assistance and international development. Besides helping students to develop their communicative abilities and advance their skills in Arabic for humanitarian assistance and international development, this course trains students within the contexts in which these efforts are carried out in formal and informal settings. This course is intended for students at the Intermediate High level of proficiency and focuses on promoting proficiency in speaking, reading, listening, and writing, as well as acquiring specialized terms pertaining to humanitarian work and international development. Prerequisite: Advanced Arabic (ARAB 3001) or equivalent. Taught Spring 2023.

Wed 5:10 – 7:00 PM

IAFF 6378 Climate Change and Environmental Politics in MENA

Jackson Perry

Thu 5:10 – 7:10 PM

This course offers a survey of political landscapes in the Middle East and North Africa related to contemporary environmental issues, particularly those shaped by global climate change. Informed by the region’s past and engaged in its present, it provides students with the historical perspective and environmental context needed to understand state and societal responses to the effects of climate change in the region. Organized thematically, this interdisciplinary course covers topics such as green-belt and solar projects in the Sahara, climate urbanism in the Gulf states, environmental dimensions of the Israel/Palestine conflict and the Syrian civil war, and the national and trans-national politics of water management around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Themes of resilience, ecological degradation, state capacity, civic engagement, and regional and global interdependencies run throughout the course. It is intended for students interested in the modern MENA region and/or contemporary environmental politics. Taught Spring 2023.

Thu 5:10 – 7:10 PM

IAFF 6379 Middle East Studies Capstone

Marc Lynch

Fri 4:00 – 5:00 PM

Second in a two-course sequence with IAFF 6377. A project-oriented course, designed to synthesize the skills and knowledge that students have acquired in their graduate study. Restricted to students in the MA in Middle East studies program. Taught Spring 2023.

Fri 4:00 – 5:00 PM

IAFF 6378 Oil: Industry, Economy, and Society

Robert Weiner

Mon 7:10 – 9:40 PM

This course takes a multidisciplinary approach (primarily political economy and management) to oil and its effects on business, nation-states, and the world economy. The first half of the course adopts a top-down viewpoint, examining the global oil environment. The second half is more bottom-up, using cases to grapple with industry issues. The course is conducted in a mixture of seminar and lecture formats. A group proposal, paper, and presentation, as well as active class participation are expected, and constitute over half the assessment. Taught Spring 2023.

Mon 7:10 – 9:40 PM

IAFF 6378 The Modern Middle East in World History

Jackson Perry

Thu 5:10 – 7:00 PM

What does a global history of the modern Middle East and North Africa look like? What kinds of questions and stories does this scholarly agenda bring into view that compartmentalized national or imperial histories occlude? What is gained, what is potentially lost, and what are the stakes in deemphasizing the common foci on European encroachment and the subsequent rise of nation-states? This graduate seminar draws on recent works that situate the social, economic, cultural, political, and environmental transformations that have swept the region over the past two centuries within broader historical trends. In addition to investigating how these trends shaped local dynamics, we will investigate how local ideas and practices helped to shape the phenomena that we associate with the modern age: global webs of capitalism, formal and informal imperialism, migration, nationalism, and transnational solidarities, among others. Our focus on the linkages of the region and its people with ideas, commodities, and communities from “outside” will also encourage us to think more critically and expansively about the geopolitical and cultural boundaries of the “Middle East” as a unit. That is, beyond our predictable examination of the encounter with “the West,” we will trace critical but neglected encounters in other directions. Throughout the course, we will evaluate the common methods and discourses entailed by global histories of the modern Middle East and North Africa. Taught Fall 2022.

Thu 5:10 – 7:00 PM

IAFF 6378.17 China in the Middle East

Robert Mogielnicki

Thu 5:10 – 7:00 PM

Special Topics in the Middle East. Taught Fall 2022.

Thu 5:10 – 7:00 PM