This second offering in a two-course sequence addresses the modern Middle East, and emphasizes the region's place in global politics and the world economy. Among the topics considered are European imperialism and local responses, nineteenth-century reform movements, the rise of the nation-state, the impact of Arab nationalism, the Arab-Israeli conflict, Islamic political movements, gender relations in the region, the importance of oil, the Iraq conflict, terrorism and the peace process.
This seminar compares the warfare that accompanied colonial encounters in North America and southern Africa, from the first European contact through the early twentieth century. It focuses on wars fought in response to resistance by native peoples and on the use of native allies in warfare between imperial foes as windows into the processes of acculturation, resistance, dispossession, and representation that characterized the colonial encounter as a whole. Texts range from traditional military history to religious, cultural, environmental, and comparative approaches to the topic.
Religious nationalist parties and social movements play an increasingly important role in our contemporary world. Promising a more “authentic” approach to nationalism than secular nationalism, these movements provide meaning to millions of adherents, while also contributing to partisanship and conflict around the world. This class investigates the history of religious nationalism with a focus primarily on the history of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish nationalism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Case studies will be drawn from the history of Israel/Palestine, India/Pakistan, Ireland, and the United States.
This seminar investigates how and why sexuality became the key to selfhood in modern Europe. Drawing on the tools of gender analysis and cultural history, students explore the ways in which political, socioeconomic and cultural tensions of particular historical moments were manifested in the sexuality of individuals. Students also examine a variety of primary sources from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries to consider how individuals defined themselves through sexuality and how definitions were imposed on them by a variety of institutions and authority figures.
The impulse to combine land, labor, and capital in profitable ways has always existed; this course focuses on how British and American entrepreneurs have attempted this challenge over the past 500 years of history. The differing cultural, institutional, and technological developments faced by entrepreneurs in each country are considered.
An examination of the historical origins and development of the discourses of sustainability, sustainable development, and the green economy, which have been ubiquitous, influential, and critically and historiographically under-examined in contemporary U.S. and global society. The course draws on contemporary global environmental historiography, while analyzing key primary sources such as Malthus' An Essay on the Principles of Population, Marsh's Man and Nature, Ehrlich's Population Bomb, Club of Rome's Limits to Growth, the United Nations' Brundtland Commission's "Our Common Future," the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, and the University of the South's Sustainability Master Plan.
This course examines the first circumnavigation of the globe during the 16th century and considers how the two maritime empires of the time, Spain and Portugal, spawned not only the opening of new routes of commerce and the development of cartography but also the very idea of globalization.
The course introduces students to the concepts of “culture” and “globalization” with an emphasis on exploring how cultural practices are shaped by border-crossing and other forms of cross-cultural exchange. Specifically, the context of Africa allows the examination of shared characteristics of globalization through colonization and other historical developments. The majority of the course then explores the cultural hybridity and heterogeneity that result from this process and continue to inform cultural practice in the contemporary period. Africa as a geographic region provides insight into the complexity of “globalization” outcomes that depend upon the diverse economic, social, cultural, and historical contexts in which cross-cultural exchange occurs.
A course concerned with analyzing how international and global integration shape local development. After reflecting on this integration during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and its impact on nation-state formation and economic development, students analyze the construction of the post-World War II international system around the Bretton-Woods institutions. Attention is also given to how international norms pertaining to human rights and democracy apply to diverse countries during the current period of globalization, and to how transnational linkages shape economic and cultural transformations. The course concludes with discussion of living abroadincluding topics such as language acquisition and personal transformation. Required core course for IGS majors.
This course provides students with an interdisciplinary introduction to both the idea of the city and the dynamics of contemporary urban life. Taking a global and international approach, the class looks at how scholars and professionals have defined and analyzed “the urban” and its component parts in cities around the world. To that end, we will consider material from different disciplines that asks: What is a city? How and why do they form? How have cities been shaped by forces such as globalization? How do they function socially, politically, and economically? What ways of life do they support? And what challenges do they face in the 21st century?
An examination of the ways in which global migrations are represented as crises and of the spatial significance of borders. Focusing on three representative spaces—the United States-Mexico border, the Mediterranean-European Union border, and the Balkans-European Union border—the course considers theories of and journalistic discourse on migration as well as aesthetic representations of migration in literature, art, and film.
How do diasporic communities form, survive, and thrive? What sociocultural, political, and/or economic forces pull them together or push them apart? How do such communities in the United States confront these forces in a moment of sociopolitical upheaval? This course considers these questions by focusing on the Coptuc Christian diaspora in Nashville. Grounded in the anthropological study of diaspora but taking a case study approach, this class explores the origins of this community as well as the dynamics shaping it today. Through this exploration, students will gain a deeper understanding of contemporary migration from the Middle East and North Africa as well as community-formation among those who have left.
Debates about “heritage” permeate our lives today, demonstrating that the traces of the past shape the way we negotiate and make sense of the present. This course considers how this negotiation of heritage plays out in the MENA region, with a focus on the disappearance and destruction of cultural and architectural heritage. Drawing on sources from history, memory and museum studies, anthropology, and urban studies, students will explore the debates heritage engenders among different communities in the region, the conflicts in which it is embedded, and the challenges people face in trying to protect heritage in the face of loss.
Examines a wide range of controversial issues concerning the moral responsibilities of human beings toward the natural environment with special attention to competing philosophical theories on the moral status of non-human species and natural ecosystems.
This course examines circumstances that facilitate or hinder the political, social, and economic incorporation of immigrants. In addition to reviewing early twentieth-century sociological theories of immigration, the course analyzes contemporary research on immigration from the standpoint of political science and related disciplines. While focused primarily on explaining patterns by which immigrants are incorporated in the United States and Europe, it also compares cases from Latin America, Eurasia, the Middle East, and other regions in relation to shared or dissimilar immigration policies, levels of economic development, and demographic compositions.
This course examines circumstances that facilitate or hinder the political, social, and economic incorporation of immigrants. In addition to reviewing early twentieth-century sociological theories of immigration, the course analyzes contemporary research on immigration from the standpoint of political science and related disciplines. While focused primarily on explaining patterns by which immigrants are incorporated in the United States and Europe, it also compares cases from Latin America, Eurasia, the Middle East, and other regions in relation to shared or dissimilar immigration policies, levels of economic development, and demographic compositions.
This course examines the processes, causes, and consequences of interstate war and internationalized intrastate conflicts—from a theoretical as well as an empirical perspective. It identifies the key variables, causal paths, and conditions under which conflicts begin, intensify, and terminate. The study is organized and conducted at various levels of analysis, ranging from individual and domestic to interstate and global. The course also considers how theoretical explanations and empirical findings can inform the selection of foreign policy instruments to resolve contemporary armed international conflicts.
An introduction to the politics of the modern Middle East and North Africa that explores topics such as diversity of political regimes; state-society relations; religious, ethnic, and territorial conflict; political economy; the transition to nation-states; and regional social movements. The course utilizes a theoretical and comparative approach but also considers in detail the specific cases of Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria, Israel-Palestine, and Iran.
An intensive study of political life in selected countries in the region, including both domestic and foreign influences and policies. Substantial attention is given to United States relations with the region.
The course explores the ideas that influence environmental thought, examines various environmental problems and suggested solutions, and critically evaluates the role that political institutions play in creating and enforcing environmental policy. Specific topics include environmental justice, environmental federalism, environmental health, and regulatory behavior. Not open for credit to students who have completed ENST 334.