Required Texts
[Note: This list is based on the Spring 2016 offering and subject to change before next offerring.]
The following books should be secured through purchase or loan:
Any additional reading assignments will be available on the course website for download as PDF files. Also, all of the books from which said articles and chapters are assigned will be available at the university library under course reserves for this course. Please contact me immediately if you have any trouble accessing the readings.
- Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003),
- James L. Gelvin, Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998)
- Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011)
- Volker Perthes, The Political Economy of Syria Under Asad (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995)
Any additional reading assignments will be available on the course website for download as PDF files. Also, all of the books from which said articles and chapters are assigned will be available at the university library under course reserves for this course. Please contact me immediately if you have any trouble accessing the readings.
Reading Schedule
Week 1: Introductions
No Readings
Week 2: Theoretical Underpinnings
Assignment Due:
- First Reading Response (Electronic version due by 6pm; Hardcopy version due in-class)
Required Readings:
- Max Weber, "Bureaucracy," in The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, edited by Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006): pp. 49-70.
- Michel Foucault, "Governmentality," in The Anthropology of the State: A Reader, edited by Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006): pp. 131-143.
- Timothy Mitchel, "The Limits of the State: Beyond Statist Approaches and their Critics," American Political Science Review 85, no. 1 (March 1991): pp. 77-96.
- Benedict Anderson, "Census, Map, Museum," originally published in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, Revised Edition (London: Verso, 2006), 167-190.
Week 3: The Late Ottoman Period
Assignment Due:
- Second Reading Response (Electronic version due by 6pm; Hardcopy version due in-class)
Required Readings:
- James L. Gelvin, "Defensive Developmentalism," The Modern Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 69-89.
- Eugene L. Rogan, "Introduction", "The Transjordanian Frontier in 1850", "Establishing a Permanent Presence", "Settlement", and "Merchants," Frontiers of the State in the Late Ottoman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1-121.
- Jens Hanssen, "Introduction" and "Part 1: Capitalization," Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1-112.
Week 4: World War I
Assignment Due:
- Third Reading Response (Electronic version due by 6pm; Hardcopy version due in-class)
- Map Quiz I (Geography of the MENA Region)
Required Readings:
- Tariq Tell, "Guns, Gold, and Grain: War and Food Supply in the Making of Transjordan," in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, edited by Steven Heydemann (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000).
- James L. Gelvin, "Introduction", "Part 1: The Structure of Faysali Rule in Syria", "Chapter 3: The Symbolic Component of Rival Nationalist Discursive Fields," and "Conclusion," Divided Loyalties: Nationalism and Mass Politics in Syria at the Close of Empire (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998), 1-195 287-298.
Supplemental Readings:
- Melanie Schulze Tanielian, "Feeding the City: The Beirut Municipality and the Politics of Food during World War I," International Journal of Middle East Studies (Nov. 2014).
Week 5: The Mandate/Colonial State I
Assignment Due:
- Fourth Reading Response (Electronic version due by 6pm; Hardcopy version due in-class)
Required Readings:
- Sarah Pursley, Part 1 & Part 2 of "Lines Drawn on an Empty Map: Iraq's Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State," Jadaliyya (June 2015).
- James L. Gelvin, "Was There a Mandates Period? Some Concluding Thoughts," in The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, edited by Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (New York: Routledge, 2015): 420-432.
- Elizabeth Williams, "Mapping the Cadastre, Producing the Fellah: Technologies and Discourses of Rule in French Mandate Syria and Lebanon" in The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, edited by Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (New York: Routledge, 2015): 170-182.
- Tariq Tell, "The Social Origins of Mandatory Rule in Transjordan," in The Routledge Handbook of the History of the Middle East Mandates, edited by Cyrus Schayegh and Andrew Arsan (New York: Routledge, 2015): 212-224.
- Robert Vitalis and Steven Heydeman. “War, Keynesianism, and Colonialism: Explaining State-Market Relations in the Postwar Middle East,” in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, edited by Steven Heydemann (Berkeley: UC Press, 2000): pp. 100-148.
- Elizabeth Thompson, “The Climax and Crisis of the Colonial Welfare State in Syria and Lebanon during World War II,” in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, edited by Steven Heydemann (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000): pp. 59-99.
Week 6: The Mandate/Colonial State II
Assignment Due:
- Map Quiz II (Political Units of the Contemporary MENA Region)
Required Readings:
- Elizabeth Thompson, "Introduction", "Part 1: War and the Advent of French Rule", "Part 2: Paternal Republicanism and the Construction of Subaltern Citizens," Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 1-112.
- Daniel Neep, "Rethinking Colonial Violence", "The Architecture of the Colonial State", and "Political Rationalities of Violence," Occupying Syria under the French Mandate: Insurgency, Space and State Formation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 5-65.
- Toby Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation Building and a History Denied (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), Preface; 63-156.
Week 7: Post-Colonial Jordan
Required Readings:
- Tariq Tell, The Social and Economic Origins of Monarchy in Jordan (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013).
- Betty Anderson, "Forging the Jordanian Nationalist Movement", "Opposition and Cooperation: The State and the JNM", and "Success and Failure: The Jordanian National Movement," Nationalist Voices in Jordan: The Street and the State (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 117-191.
- Paul W.T. Kingston, "Breaking the Patterns of the Mandate: Economic Nationalism and State Formation in Jordan, 1951-1957," in Village, Steppe and State: The Social Origins of Modern Jordan, edited by Eugene L. Rogan and Tariq Tell (London: British Academic Press, 1994), 187-216.
- Nathan Citino, "The Ghosts of Development: The United States and Jordan's East Ghor Canal," Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 4 (Fall 2014)
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Spring Break
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Week 9: Post-Colonial Syria I
Required Readings:
- Steven Heydemann, Authoritarianism in Syria: Institutions and Social Conflict, 1946-1970 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
Week 10: Post-Colonial Syria II
Required Readings:
- Raymond Hinnebusch, "The Ba'th Revolution from Above", "Power and Politics under Asad", "State-Society Relations under Asad," and "The Political Economy of Development," Syria: Revolution from Above (London: Routledge, 2001), 47-138.
- Volker Perthes, "The Emergence and Transformation of a Statist Economy", "Social Structure and Class Relations", "The Structure of Authoritarianism," and "Economic Policies and Economic Decision Making," The Political Economy of Syria Under Asad (London: I.B. Tauris, 1995), 23-249.
Week 11: Post-Colonial Iraq I
Assignment Due In-Class:
- Outlines of Final Papers
Required Readings:
- Charles Tripp, "Introduction", "The Hashemite Monarchy 1941-58," and "The Republic, 1958-68" A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1-7; 105-185.
- Marion Farouk-Sluglett and Peter Slugglet, "1958-1963" and "1963-1968," Iraq since 1958: From Revolution to Dictatorship (London: IB Tauris, 2003), 47-106.
- Jonathan Franzen, "Communists, Kurds, and Arab Nationalists in Revolutionary Iraq" and "Non-Capitalist Development, Arab Socialism, and Armed Rebellion during the Reign of the 'Arefs, 1963-1968," Red Star Over Iraq: Iraqi Communism Before Saddam Hussein (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 85-184
Week 12: Post-Colonial Iraq II
Required Readings:
- Charles Tripp, Selections of "The Ba'th and the Rule of Saddam Hussein," A History of Iraq (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 193-223.
- Joseph Sassoon, "The Rise of the Ba'th", "Party Structure and Organization", and "Bureaucracy and Civil Life under the Ba'th" Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party: Inside an Authoritarian Regime (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 16-70; 227-284.
- Dina Rizk Khoury, "Introduction", "Iraq's Wars under the Ba'th", "The Internal Front: Making War Routine," and "Battle Fronts: War and Insurgency," Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 1-122.
Week 13: Post-Colonial Lebanon
Required Readings:
- Fawwaz Trabulsi, Selections from A Modern History of Lebanon (London: Pluto Press, 2007 ), 109-155.
- Caroline Attie, Selections from The Struggle in the Levant: Lebanon in the 1950s (New York: IB Tauris, 2004), 18-69.
- Michael Hudson, "Presidential Power: The Struggle to Dominate" and "Presidential Power: The Attempt to Modernize," The Precarious Republic: Political Modernization in Lebanon (New York: Random House, 1968), 262-336.
- Michael Johnson, "State and Revolution" and "The Autonomous State," Class and Client in Beirut: The Sunni Muslim Community and the Lebanese State 1840-1984 (Ithaca: Ithaca University Press, 1987), 117-158.
- Martha Wenger, "Primer: Lebanon's 15-Year War, 1975-1990," Middle East Report 162 (1990).
- Elizabeth Picard, "The Political Economy of Civil War in Lebanon," in War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East, edited by Steven Heydemann (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000): pp. 292-324.
Week 14: Sanctions, Regime Change, and State Building (12 April 2016)
Required Readings:
- Joy Gordon, "The Policy of Containment", "How the Sanctions Worked", "The Magnitude of the Catastrophe," and "Role of the Iraqi Government," Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010).
- Sarah Graham-Brown, "Impact of Intervention on the Iraqi State" and "Iraqi Society," Sanctioning Saddam: The Politics of Intervention in Iraq (London: IB Tauris, 1999).
- Dina Rizk Khoury, "Things Fall Apart," Iraq in Wartime: Soldiering, Martyrdom, and Remembrance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 123-160.
Week 15: The Restructuring of Populist of Authoritarian Rule (19 April 2016)
Required Readings:
- Steven Heydemann, "Upgrading Authoritarianism in the Arab World" (Washington DC: Brookings Institute, 2007).
- Bassam Haddad, Business Networks in Syria: The Political Economy of Authoritarian Resilience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011).
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Final Exam
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