Graduate Center-History Program Topics In Middle East Studies History Spring 2011

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1 Graduate Center-History Program Topics In Middle East Studies History Spring 2011 Course Description: The objective of the seminar is to consider with a critical eye how history as a discipline is conceptualized and produced in general and the ways in which it informs the production of a so-called Middle East history. Since the course is thematically (and not chronologically) organized, it is interdisciplinary in nature, which by implication means drawing on different bodies of knowledge anthropology, philosophy, political theory, science etc.-that inform historical work. Particular attention for example is given to our conceptualization of temporality and the difference between natural and historical temporality and the ways in which it shapes our understanding of utopia, of progress, and periodization in history. Other themes will be tackled including the question of memory and history, diaspara, governmentality and the modern state, and the birth of the modern subject. Learning Objectives: The main objective is to introduce students to theoretical and methodological approaches that inform Middle East studies. Another goal is to prepare beginning Ph.D. students majoring in ME for their written and oral exams and to facilitate advanced Ph.D. students with frameworks of analysis that will aid them in their search for a dissertation topic. A final paper in the form of either a historiography or research paper is an exercise in improving writing skills. Course Requirement: Participation: Weekly responses and presentations: 50% 1. Weekly critical response pieces are due at the beginning of class. Each week s response should address the following: What are the author s main arguments? The evidence used to support it? All papers should be approximately 500 words, typed. Students will rotate presenting questions and ideas to guide the discussion of each week s readings. Final Paper: 50% 2. Students are required to write a historiographical essay commenting on one or more of the themes discussed in class. Students may also choose to write a research paper or an annotated bibliography in consultation with me. Required Texts: Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing, Columbia University Press, 2007 (ISBN: ) Available as EBook (ISBN: ) Robert Berkhoffer, Beyond the Great Story: History as Text and Discourse, Harvard University Press, (ISBN: ) Faisal Devji, Landscape of the Jihad, Cornell University Press, 2005 (ISBN:

2 Ian Hacking, Rewriting The Soul, multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory, Princton University Press, 1995 (ISBN: ) Available on Kindle. Enseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Geneology and Mobility across the Indian Ocean, University of California Press, 2006 (ISBN: ) Ilana Feldman, Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority and the work of Rule , Duke University Press, 2008, (ISBN: ) available on kindle. Reinhart Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, Stanford University Press, 2002 (ISBN ) Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People, Verso Press, 2009 (ISBN:13: ) Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, University of California Press, 1991 (ISBN: 13: ) Amira Mittermier, Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination, University of California Press, 2010 (ISBN: 13: ) Carolyn Steedman, DUST: The Archive and Cultural History, Rutgers University Press, 2002 (ISBN: ) Weekly Assignments: 1 st Week I: Introduction to the class 2 nd Week History: Text and Discourse Robert Berkhoffer, Beyond the Great Story, chs.1, 2 and 3, pp Steedman, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History, preface, chs.1-2, pp Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, Chicago University Press, Indrani Chatterjee, Testing the Local against the Colonial Archive, History Workshop, 44 (1997): Ann Laura Stoller, The Pulse of the Archive ch. 2 in Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense, Antoinette Burton ed., Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions and the Writing of History, esp. Durba Ghosh s National archives and the Politics of Miscegenation: Britain and India, Marilyn Booth s Fiction s Imaginative Archive and the Newspapers Local Scandals Week III Timing History, Spacing Concepts Required reading: Reinhardt Koselleck, The Practice of Conceptual History, ch. 1,6,13,15. R. Berkhoffer, Beyond the Great Story, ch. 5 Emplotment: Historicizing Time, and ch. 9 Reflexive Contextualization pp Suggested Readings: Koselleck, Futures Past, Part II. Week IV Colonialism and Modern Power Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt.

3 David Scott, Conscripts of Modernity: The Tragedy of Colonial Enlightenment, Duke University Press, 2004, Prologue, chs. 3 & 5. Samira Haj, An Islamic Reconfiguration of Colonial Modernity in Reconfiguring Islamic Tradition, pp Week V Governmentality and the Modern State Ilana Feldman Governing Gaza: Bureaucracy, Authority and the Work of Rule David Scott, Colonial Governmentality, Social Text, 43 (1995): Michel Foucault, On Governmentality in Samira Haj, Governable Muslim Subject in Reconfiguring Islamic Modernity, Week VI Tradition and Modernity Talal Asad, The Idea of the Anthropology of Islam, 1986 Reinhardt Koselleck, Futures Past, pp Timothy Mitchell, The Stages of Modernity in Mitchell s Questions of Modernity, 2000, pp.1-34 Stefania Pandolfo, The Thin Line of Modernity: Some Moroccan Debates on Subjectivity, in Mitchell, ed., Questions of Modernity, pp Talal Asad, Geneologies of Religion: Discipline and Reason of Power in Christianity and Islam, John Hopkins Press, Week VII Production of the Social Sciences in Colonial and Post-colonial Egypt Omnia el Shakry, The Great Social Laboratory, Stanford University Press, Michael Ezekiel Gasper, The Power o Representation: Publics Peasants and Islam in Egypt. Stanford University Press, Introduction, chs. 4&5. Timothy Mitchell, The Rule of Experts. Week VIII Diaspora and Empire Engseng Ho, The Graves of Tarim: Geneology and Mobility across the Indian Ocean. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, ch. 10 (Census, Maps, Museums ), ch.11 (Memory and Forgetting). Enrique Dussel, Eurocentrism and Modernity, Boundary, 1993, #2 20/3. Arjun Appadurai, Putting Heirarchy in its Place, Cultural Anthropology 3 (1), Week VIIII Reflections on Interiority and Subjectivity Ian Hacking, Rewriting The Soul, multiple Personality and the sciences of Memory.

4 Judith Butler, The Psychic Life of Power, ch.3 Subjection, Resistance, Resignification: Between Freud and Foucault Carolyn Steedman, Strange Dislocations: Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority Michel Foucault, History of Madness. David Theo Goldberg, Racial Subjects Modenrity, Race and Morality in Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning, Blackwell Publishers, Week X Landscapes of Imagination: The Soul and the Mad Amira Mittermier, Dreams that Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination. Stephani Pandolfo, The Knot of the Soul: Post colonial Conundrums, Madness and the Imagination, in Good, Hyde, Pinto and Good eds., Postcolonial Disorders. Good, Hyde, Pinto and Good, Post colonial Disorders: Reflection on Subjectivity in the Contemporary World in, Postcolonial Disorders., pp.,1-40. Week XI Gender and Sexuality Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Moustaches,Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties in Iranian Modernity. University of California Press, Saba Mahmood, Feminist Theory, Embodiment and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival, Cultural Anthropology, 6#2 (2001): Joseph Massad, Desiring Arabs, chs. 1,2 &3. Elizabeth Thompson. Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon, Colubia university Press, 2000, Part I & II. Week XII Historical Memory and/or the DNA in the Making of National History Shlomo Sand, The Invention of the Jewish People. Nadia Abu-el-Haj, readings to be assigned. Ian Hacking Making Up People, and Why Ask What in Social Construction of What? Samira Haj, Reordering the People of Jerusalem in Michael Sorkin, ed.,. Nadia Abu el-haj, Facts on the Ground: Archeological Practice and Territoria Self- Fashioning in Israeli Society, Chicago University press, Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust. Week XIII On Violence and Terror Talal Asad, On Suicide Bombing. Faisal Devji, Landscape of the Jihad. Veena Das, Wittgenstein and Anthropology, Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, 1988.

5 Hannah Arendt, On Violence & The Decline of the Nation-state and the End of Rights of Man in The Origins of Judith Butler and Spivak, Who Sings the Nation, Seagull Books, 2007.