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This course examines the dynamic relationship between capitalism and the environment across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region shaped by diverse landscapes: from the fertile valleys of the Nile to the arid expanses of the Sahara and the coastal economies of the Mediterranean and Arabian seas. By tracing the ecological transformations that accompanied the expansion of capitalist economies, we will explore how global markets, imperial projects, and local and global investors reshaped the region's environments and economies. Each week, we will focus on a key energy resource, such as water, food, animals, timber, coal, and oil, drawing from a range of secondary and primary sources, including official documents, travelogues, and climate datasets.

Where do ideas about human development and progress come from? How do ideas about human progress intersect with the development of nonhuman landscapes, built environments and infrastructure? What are the intended and unintended consequences of the projects these ideas inspire? This class asks you to consider this goal from a global historical perspective, including but not limited to the Middle East. In particular, we will examine how projects aimed at improvement have legitimated and shaped colonial expansion, large-scale infrastructure schemes, and population exchanges, alongside human experiences of dispossession, loss, and exile.

This course explores the nation state in the Middle East through the perspectives of minority groups in Israel and Iraq. The class examines the origins of these two states since WWI, and considers the integral role that minority groups have played in their formation. Using an array of primary sources and methods of analysis, we will examine significant political, economic, social, and discursive trends in these states, while keeping in mind the broader regional and global contexts.

( HISTORY 83A is 3 units; HISTORY 183A is 5 units.) In the early eighteenth century, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, wife of the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, introduced Ottoman smallpox inoculation to western medicine. But over the next two centuries, Ottoman scientific, cultural, and geopolitical strength disintegrated, while western Europeans colonized much of the globe and industrialized at home. How and why did this happen? This course explores this period of wrenching social change and transformation, and asks how the Enlightenment, with its calls for universal human rights and democracy, existed alongside crimes against humanity such as the Armenian Genocide and the Jewish Holocaust. We inquire into ethical dilemmas from diverse perspectives to better understand the contested heritage of our modern world. Bringing western and non-western philosophy into conversation with history, we study the changing structures of Ottoman and European societies in the context of industrialization, repeated cycles from monarchy to democracy to dictatorship, and the growth of radical strains of Islam as a social protest and revolt against European dominance.

How did people move, before the inventions of the train and steamship? How did they cross borders before the passport, or get news before the internet, the telephone, the telegraph? We often imagine people, things, and ideas in the early modern period as being static, unchanging, and immobile. This course offers a new "mobile" perspective on history of the Early Modern world before 1800, particularly focusing on the Ottoman Empire, Eastern and Western Europe.

(85B is 3 units; 185B is 5 units.) Jews: How to understand them? A religious faith, yet many - perhaps most - are not religious. A ubiquitous presence in contemporary life yet numbering barely more than the population of Tokyo. Viewed widely as speaking in one resounding voice yet divided along political and cultural lines, not the least of which regarding attitudes toward the State of Israel. How to identify the ties that have bound Jews together and - as often as not - tear them apart? Why the persistence of antisemitism? Are anti-Zionism and antisemitism one and the same? Does the recent Jewish past provide guidelines for the future, or a hopelessly distorted map? Class sessions will be conducted in an interplay between open-ended discussions and lectures regarding these and other pressing, perplexing issues.

For over two millennia, Jews and Judaism have been the object of sustained anxieties, fears, and fantasies, which have in turn underpinned repeated outbreaks of violence and persecution. This course will explore the development and impact of antisemitism from Late Antiquity to the Enlightenment, including the emergence of the Blood libel, the association between Jews and moneylending, and the place of Judaism in Christian and Islamic theology. No prior background in history or Jewish studies is necessary. Prerequisite: PWR 1.

(Same as HISTORY 187. History majors and other taking 5 units, register for 187.) Explores the contested politics of these societies in modern times. Topics include controversies surrounding the meaning of revolution, state building, war, geopolitics, Islamic law, clerical authority, gender, an Islamic economy, culture, and ethnic, national and religious identities from the 1940s to the present. Assignments will focus on primary sources (especially legal documents, poetry, novels, and memoirs) and films.

We will examine some salient issues in the history of Palestine, Israel, and the Zionist-Palestinian conflict from the late 19th century to the present. Topics include: Palestine and Palestinian nationalism, modern Zionism as ideology and settlement project, British colonial rule in Palestine, founding of the State of Israel, the wars of 1948 and 1967, the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, the Gaza wars. No prior knowledge of Middle East history is required. The course will enable you to articulate the positions of the major parties to the conflict (understanding that there is no single, unified Zionist, or Jewish, or Palestinian, or Arab position). Vigorous debate is strongly encouraged. All perspectives will be respected. The class will emphasize critical reading, writing, and argumentation expressed in a civil tone. These are fundamental skills for exercising educated citizenship and essential to interpreting information and making good policy.