HIST-LIT 90EW: Migrants and Displacement in the Modern Middle East

Semester: 

Fall

Offered: 

2021

Instructor: Sam Dolbee
Meeting time: Wednesday, 3:00-5:00 pm 

Migrants and DisplacementThis course follows people who moved (or were made to move) in, to, or from the Middle East and North Africa between the late nineteenth century and the present. It brings together a diverse group, including enslaved people, religious pilgrims, nomads, genocide survivors, refugees, experts, migrant laborers, revolutionaries, exiles, and, indeed, no shortage of people who might fall into several of these categories. Through these different forms of mobility and displacement, the course will trace the end of the Ottoman Empire, European colonialism, and national liberation across the region. Relying on films, fiction, memoirs, music, podcasts, and poetry, the course will also shed light on how these historical events shaped everyday life: what food people ate, what music they listened to, and who they fell in love with. Thus while attending to structures of empire, the nation-state, and capitalism, the course always emphasizes how individuals struggled to make place their own.