HIST 306
On the Move: Migration, Displacement, and Dispossession in the Middle East Spring 2015
Division II
Cross-listed ARAB 306
This is not the current course catalog

Class Details

This course explores how patterns of human migration impacted the states and societies of the Middle East from the nineteenth century to the present. The course retrieves nomads, labor migrants, travelers, and refugees from the margins of social history and focuses on how post-Ottoman Arab states thought about migration, how they categorized migrants, managed human mobility, and even compelled forced migrations. We will take special interest in how modern Arab nation-states shaped their populations through migration policy: how did the construction of new national boundaries influence ethnic, religious, and political identities? Students will analyze how legal paraphernalia like passports, the census, visas, and international law made the state a stakeholder in regulating human migration. This course incorporates discussions of major migrations in the region, including the Armenian Genocide, the Greek-Turkish population transfer, Palestinian dispossession, and Arab emigration to the Americas. Contemporary issues like statelessness, “brain drain,” and sectarian politics will be contextualized within the region’s experience with migration. Course readings will include historical case studies, participant interviews, memoirs, diasporic literature/arts, and international legal documents. Students will additionally apply recent theories of migration in the Middle Eastern context.
The Class: Format: seminar
Limit: 25
Expected: 15-20
Class#: 4087
Grading: OPG
Requirements/Evaluation: Evaluation will be based on class discussion, regular short response papers, and a longer, final term paper based on a case study of the student's choosing
Extra Info: may not be taken on a pass/fail basis
Prerequisites: none
Enrollment Preferences: History and Arabic Studies majors
Distributions: Division II
Notes: This course is cross-listed and the prefixes carry the following divisional credit:
ARAB 306 Division II HIST 306 Division II
Attributes: HIST Group E Electives - Middle East

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