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Semester 1

Revolution and Reform in the Modern Middle East (HIST10489)

Subject

History

College

CAHSS

Credits

20

Normal Year Taken

3

Delivery Session Year

2023/2024

Pre-requisites

Visiting students must have completed 3 History courses at grade B or above, and please note that we will only consider courses with a specific focus on History (not including History of Art) towards these pre-requisites. We will only consider University/College level courses. **Please see Additional Restrictions below**

Course Summary

The course introduces students to key themes in Middle Eastern history, with a focus on revolution and reform. It focuses on 9 case-studies starting the middle of the 19thc and takes us to the 2011 revolutions. The course deepens students' knowledge of specific local contexts across the Ottoman Empire, Iran, Egypt, the Levant, the Maghreb and the Gulf. It is grounded in analysis of primary sources from these cases, ranging from feminist hunger strikes to constitutional reforms, and from political prisoners' writings to photographs and film. The variety of themes and types of sources covered should be of interest to students interested in the Middle East as well as students interested in social, cultural an intellectual history in non-European contexts.

Course Description

The history of the modern Middle East has been shaped by moments of profound change: constitutional revolutions and peasant revolts, anti-colonial revolutions and military coups d'état, scientific revolutions and popular uprisings. This course grounds students' understanding of revolution in the Middle East in deeper processes of reform, state-building and sustained social movement. It encourages students to see revolution and reform not as opposite sides of a binary but as processes along a continuum of forces driving historical change. The course moves through Iran, Turkey, North Africa, the Levant and the Gulf starting in the middle of the 19th century and extending to the 2011 Revolts. It provides a survey of key moments of revolution and reform that have shaped the region through an exploration of a series of pertinent conceptual and historiographical questions. In short, it asks: how have revolutions and reform shaped the past and present of the Middle East? It opens with an introductory conceptual discussion on ideas of revolution, reform, constitutionalism, and science. In each of the following weeks, we explore a specific concept or historical agent (eg peasantry, state-sanctioned reform, women's movements, political Islam, carceral regimes) through an analysis of a particular case study. Students are encouraged to draw on conceptual and historiographical discussions from previous weeks as we progress through the course. The course will deepen students' knowledge of histories, geographies and concepts that have made (and unmade) the states and societies of the Modern Middle East.

Assessment Information

Written Exam 0%, Coursework 80%, Practical Exam 20%

Additional Restrictions

Unless you are nominated on a History or HCA exchange agreement, visiting students are only permitted to enrol in two 3rd year History courses each, per semester, before the start of the relevant semester’s welcome period – and spaces on each course are limited so cannot be guaranteed for any student. This includes courses in Economic History and Scottish History. Enrolment in a third course from this group will depend on whether there are still spaces available in the September Welcome Period, and cannot be guaranteed. It is NOT appropriate for students to contact staff within this subject area to ask for an exception to be made; all enquiries to enrol in these courses must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. This is due to the limited number of spaces available in this very popular subject area.

view the timetable and further details for this course