481 - 490 of 788 results for: HISTORY

Focuses on political regimes, transregional connections, economic interactions and sociocultural formations in the early modern Islamic Afro-Eurasia. Topics include complex political-economic systems of the Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal empires and expansion of Turco-Persianate political and literary cultures across the Post-Mongolian Eurasia; experiences of various Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Hindu, as well as urban, rural and nomadic communities and networks under Islamicate political regimes; consolidation of transregional commerce and cultural exchange with the proliferation of networks of merchants, scholars and sufis; new tendencies in knowledge, individual, gender, family, social order, and religion; incorporation of the Islamic world in the global economy; Muslims in the age of revolutions; political and social reforms and consolidation of Muslim internationalism in the age of imperialism.

This course begins with the withdrawal of the European empires from the Middle East in the wake of World War II and the ascendance of the United States (and to a lesser extent the Soviet Union) in the region. We will follow these superpowers' attempts to build and control spheres of influence in the Middle East throughout the 20th Century and continue on to an examination of the Arab Spring as a response to decades of American-imposed neoliberal policies. The focus will be on two themes: first, what techniques did the US and USSR use to project power in the Middle East, and what (if anything) distinguished them from the practices of European imperialism? Second, how did local actors navigate this environment, either by contesting American/Soviet power or by using it to their advantage?

This course expands conceptions of Jewish History by focusing on overlooked regions such as North Africa, the Middle East, and the Balkans. Beginning in medieval Al-Andalus, the course follows the Jews of Spain and Portugal to other parts of the world and traces their stories into the 20th century. Topics include the expulsions from Iberia, the formation of a Sephardi identity, encounters between Sephardim and other communities (Muslim, Christian, and Jewish), life in the Ottoman Empire, networks and mobility, gender, colonialism, and the rise of the nation-state paradigm.

This course explores the lives and fates of European Jews as they re-encountered, reimagined, and reconstructed their communities in the grim aftermath of World War II. Attending to a variety of national and ideological contexts, with a particular focus on Eastern Europe and the communist bloc, the course traces how Jews wrestled with their present and future in the wake of continent-wide calamity, the founding of the state of Israel, Soviet influence, Cold War geopolitics, the collapse of communism, and, finally, the post-Soviet order of the 1990s and 2000s. It likewise traces how postwar European Jewry grappled with the anxieties of immigration and return, the wages of acculturation and assimilation, and the interplay between cultural destruction, revival, and nostalgia in the face of persistent antisemitism, explosive Holocaust memory politics, and significant foreign Jewish philanthropy. Drawing on a wide range of printed, visual, and oral sources, this highly interdisciplinary course investigates questions particular to the Jewish experience, but also broader concerns about European inclusion, interethnic relations, and diasporic identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. All readings are in English. **For time and location, email jtapper@stanford.edu**

This course covers the post-WWII history of counterinsurgency, a type of warfare in which a powerful, state-backed military is pitted against guerrilla fighters, or insurgents. In the context of decolonization (the dissolution of European overseas empires) and the United States' growing role on the world stage, we will examine four counterinsurgency campaigns: the French in Indochina (1946-1954) and Algeria (1954-1962); and the Americans in Vietnam (1964-1973) and Iraq (2003-2011). Using a combination of secondary and primary sources, including declassified government documents, maps, photography, film, music, news broadcasts, and recorded tapes of presidential phone calls, we will ask four overarching questions: 1) How did military planners and politicians learn from prior counterinsurgencies, and what are the strengths and pitfalls of an approach to warfare that applies historical "lessons learned" to contemporary problems? 2) Are torture and violence against civilians the results of mishandled counterinsurgency, or are they inherent to the doctrine? 3) Why have counterinsurgency strategies persisted despite long-term failures and public criticism? 4) How does historical thinking allow us to participate more effectively in debates about counterinsurgency and torture in America today? Throughout, we will explore how counterinsurgency and torture have traveled across space and time, intertwining historical trajectories in Southeast Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East.

This course addresses the timely topic of Jewish involvement in various political movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries across the world, from Argentina to Tunisia. Though Jews are sometimes pigeon-holed in the media being either predominantly of a liberal bent or staunch right-wingers supportive of Israel, this course aims at showing the richness of Jewish political options, ranging from anarchism to socialism, as well as specific national movements which defy an easy categorization (such as Zionism, Kemalism and Peronism). Attention will be drawn to the social factors which influenced political considerations, be they class, religion, or ethnic tensions, as well as to the overall political context in which one's identity was shaped. Combining a focus on the history of ideas with a biographical approach to representative figures (such as Leon Trotsky, Emma Goldman, Alberto Memmi, and Susan Sontag), the course will appeal primarily to students interested in modern and contemporary Jewish history as well as to students seeking an introduction to political doctrines and ideologies.

This courses the timely phenomenon of fake news in relation to the Jews. It addresses the various ways in which untrue claims about Jews have developed, spread, and persisted across the centuries. The course will introduce students to the historical study not only of fake news but also of many of the categories associated with it - such as conspiracy, propaganda, and disinformation - on the basis of select case studies ranging from the Middle Ages to Nazi Germany. It will also offer students a background into Jewish history, allowing them to understand why the Jews were singled out as a target of enmity throughout time.

Current media coverage dwells on the plight of migrants passing through North Africa in search of higher-wage jobs in Europe. But labor migration from, to, and through North Africa and the Middle East is nothing new. Pushing beyond widespread views of labor migration as a policy problem for Western governments to "solve," we will instead explore how migrant laborers shaped the modern history of North Africa and the Middle East, from the late Ottoman Empire until today. We will read an array of texts in history and historical anthropology--each deploying different sources, methods, and empirical examples--to discuss how migrant laborers molded 1) conceptions of race and gender, 2) the development of capitalism, 3) political mobilization, and 4) the boundaries between nations and regions. Among other examples, we will discuss trans-Atlantic migrants from the Ottoman Levant who shaped labor and gender relations within the Middle East and the Americas; migrant workers from North Africa and the Middle East who sustained wartime industries in European empires and metropoles; the construction of an oil economy in the Gulf that was built by migrant labor; and sub-Saharan African domestic workers in the Middle East facing exploitation and crisis. Throughout, we will devote particular attention to the ways in which our readings place migrant laborers and their communities at the center of analysis, despite the fact that migrant laborers do not have a voice in dominant archives.

Note: Students must be enrolled in the lecture HISTORY 88 in order to enroll in this colloquium. 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.