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This course explores the historical problem of how authority and community (in both the political and religious sense) were defined and challenged in the early Islamic period. Chronological topics covered include: the political, cultural, and religious world of Late Antiquity into which Muhammad was born; the crystallization of a small community of believers who supported Muhammad's message of radical monotheism and aided him in the conquest and conversion of the Arabian Peninsula; the problems of legacy and leadership in the community of the faithful after Muhammad's death; the Arabo-Islamic conquests beyond Arabia during the 7th and early 8th centuries and the establishment of the first Islamic empire under the rule of the Umayyad clan; the Sunni/Shi'a split (and further splits in Shi'ism); the revolution of 750 A.D. and overthrow of the Umayyads by the 'Abbasids; the flourishing of a sophisticated world of learning and culture under the 'Abbasids; and the waning of the 'Abbasids empire in the tenth century and political reconfiguration of the Islamic lands.

This course reinterprets Middle Eastern political history through radical movements and global resistance. Rather than focusing on states and empires, it centers workers, students, women, queer activists, and intellectuals who imagined liberation across borders from the late Ottoman period to the present. Grounded in Marxism, feminism, anti-colonialism, and Third Worldism, the course explores how Middle Eastern struggles were shaped by and contributed to global movements in places from Havana, Tokyo, Accra, Moscow, and Oakland to Istanbul, Algiers, Beirut, Cairo, and Tehran. Through manifestos, memoirs, films, podcasts, and scholarly texts, we examine anti-colonial insurgencies, leftist movements, feminist organizations, postcolonial state-building, and contemporary activism. By placing the Middle East within the broader history of the Global South, the course presents political history as a story of social struggles that crossed geographic and cultural boundaries. Students will reflect on solidarity, revolution, exile, and resistance, and consider how past movements resonate with struggles today.

This colloquium offers an introduction to the political and social history of modern Iran from the early twentieth century to the present. We will examine how Iran transformed from a dynastic society rooted in kinship and religious authority into a modern nation-state shaped by competing ideologies, mass political movements, and global pressures. The course begins with a brief overview of premodern Iran and the historiographical traditions that have shaped its modern narratives. We then trace Iran's role as a geopolitical buffer between imperial powers, the internal tensions between tradition and modernization, and the far-reaching consequences of the Constitutional Revolution (1905-11), which marked the beginning of Iran's twentieth-century transformation. We will study the reign of Reza Shah Pahlavi (1921-41), whose top-down modernization reshaped the state and society and created space for religious institutions and actors to emerge as sources of popular political authority. The second half of the course focuses on the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah (1941-79), his clash with Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the White Revolution, and the unrest that culminated in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. We conclude by examining the Islamic Republic's formation, the Iran-Iraq War, and ongoing struggles over reform, civil rights, and modernization, with particular attention to youth and women's activism. This course is not only about engaging with academic literature but also about developing the tools to navigate information in a region often labeled volatile and media-hostile. To that end, we will work with a range of sources, including maps, films, news archives, and online research tools.

What is Islamic law? What kinds of sources do we use to access Islamic law, and how has Islamic legal thinking and practice changed historically? This course introduces students to topics in Islamic law while addressing questions of continuity and change in the legal tradition from the medieval period to the present. The first part of the course will introduce aspects of substantive Islamic law, including criminal and penal law, family law, and the law of war. The second part will explore the diversity of Islamic legal traditions across chronological and geographic space, examining topics from classical jurisprudence to Ottoman constitutionalism, the encounter with colonialism and modern state iterations. No prior knowledge or prerequisites are required.

This course is an opportunity and invitation to explore themes and topics in politics and society in Iran from 1500 to 1900 CE. The course invites students to read, discuss, and reflect on trends and events that shaped early modern politics and society in Iran through the lens of primary and secondary sources, including narrative and archival sources in translation. Topics include the changing dynamics of state-building, religious transition, revivalist movements, women in politics and society, modernization paths in response to European global hegemony, and center-periphery relations concerning linguistic and religious minorities.

This course focuses on Palestine during Ottoman rule, spanning from the 16th century to the 1920s. It explores the diverse peoples, territories, cities, and cultures of Palestine, alongside significant political developments. Key themes include the region's integration into the Ottoman Empire, the reconstruction of Jerusalem under Ottoman rule, European fascination with the "Holy Land," intricate dynamics among Muslim Arabs, Christian Arabs, Armenians, and Jews with fluid boundaries, the rise of regional powers, the expansion of global trade and capitalism, and the establishment of Jewish settlements alongside Ottoman reforms in the 19th century. The course culminates in discussions on contested notions of multi-religious and multi-national Ottoman citizenship, and examines the eventual demise of the Ottoman regime within the context of the Zionist movement, Palestinian and Arab nationalism, and European colonial ambitions.

Visions of development have transformed the modern world, reshaping landscapes, uprooting communities, and redefining what it means to live a good life. This course examines how projects of improvement, often framed as humanitarian or progressive, have served as tools of domination. From colonial interventions to postwar infrastructure and population transfers, we will explore how development has operated as both promise and threat. Alongside grand ambitions, we will trace the lived experiences of dispossession, displacement, and environmental destruction. Who defines progress? Who benefits? And who pays the price? The class asks you to consider these questions from a global historical perspective, including but not limited to the Middle East. Through international case studies, critical readings, and reflective assignments, you will approach development not as a neutral goal but as a contested process shaped by power, ideology, and resistance. The course moves between past and present to consider how development continues to shape lives, landscapes, and futures.

This course focuses on the complex politics of gender, centering the experiences, lives, and histories of women as key subjects of the course. We will examine the roles of women in shifting dynamics of marriage, divorce, reproduction, motherhood, prostitution, education and labor force participation, urban life, and female criminality through a historical analysis. We will further investigate socio-political transformations from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century, emphasizing patterns of continuity and change. Finally, we will explore how gender both intersected with and influenced broader legal, political, and social dynamics during this pivotal period.

( History 282J is an undergraduate course offered for 5 units; History 382J is a graduate course offered for 4-5 units.) nnThis course explores the history of disasters in the Middle East from the early modern period to the mid-20th-century. We will trace the evolving meanings of disasters and misfortunes by focusing on critical moments -- plagues, fires, earthquakes, wars -- to examine how people have responded to these events, labeled them, and devised strategies to live with or forget them. The course readings follow the evolution of policies and norms together with the articulation of new forms of knowledge and expertise in the wake of catastrophe. Additionally, particular attention will be paid to how modern conceptions of disaster relate to older understandings of apocalypse, as well as to various strands of "disaster reformism," when rethinking tragedy and time helped assert radical agendas for reforming political, economic, social, communal, racial, and gender relations while remodeling social science and intellectual life. The course focuses on various trajectories of disaster thinking in Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Armenian, and Hebrew.