Syllabus
Middle East after the Arab Spring: From teh Arab uprisings to ISIS
Six years after massive mobilisation again authoritarian the Arab World is in a still deeper crisis. The course offers a series of reading and debates about the background of the last Arab decade, follwowing a series of questions: Hpw and why did the Arab mobilisation fail? What social and political transformations did teh Arab Spring bring? What explains teh return of authoritarianism and th spread of violence? Are these outcomes result of the Arab Spring or do they have deeper causes? What is the regional, social and political context of the present crisis?
The course will follow a multidimensional and thematic questioning. Its aim will nt be to give definitive asnwers, but to allow participants to increase their orientation in the various dimensions of Middle Easter crises: governance challanges, geopolitical chanes, political Islam and its transformations, sectarianism, political aims of terrorism, gender roles, secularism, political economy of oil, the role of the military in the Middle East etc.
The purpose of the course is to identify questions and work together towards possible answers.
There will be two readings (an article and a book chapter) for every session available for download in Moodle.
During the course, there will be a short assignments every month: participants are expected to read one full book and write a short summary/review; present an article or a topic during class; write a short essay elaborating a given question; and write a final essay of one's choosing.
Course requirements:
- Active participation (at least 75%, or 9 out of 12 sessions)
There will not be a control but almost every week I will be expecting participants either to hand in a review, essay or at least essay outlines . Consequently, absence will get noticed and can be excused in advance for a reason)
- Write a short book review (2 pages) due 10. 11.
- First mid-term essay (5 pages) essay due 30. 11.
- Final essay (8 pages) due 4. 1.
Credit structure
15 % Participation and attendance
10 % Book review (2-3 pages) due 2. 11.
25 % Midterm short paper (5 pages ) due 30. 11.
50 % Final paper (8-12 pages) due 30. 1.
Course outline
- Introduction: Arab Spring: revolutions and counterrevolutions
From Arab Spring...
- Context: Regional state system from 1918 to 2011
- Democratisation processes: Egypt vs. Tunisia
- Reform processes in the monarchies
...to the Arab Winter
- Authoritarianism and militaries
- The sources of ISIS and extremist jihadism
- New regional geopolitics (oil, demography, regional politics)
Lasting changes
- Sectarianism
- Transformations of islamism
- Human rights, women rights and civic activism
- Conclusion and presentation of essays
Readings
Fraihat, Ibrahim: Unfinished revolutions: Yemen, Libya, and Tunisia after the Arab Spring, 2016Council on Foreign Relations. 2011. The New Arab Revolt: What Happened, What It Means, and What Comes Next. New York: Council on Foreign Relations/Foregin Affairs. (Free e-book)
Gerges, Fawaz: ISIS: A History. 2016
Fred Halliday. The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics and Ideology, Cambridge University Press 2005
R. Stephen Humphreys, Between Memory and Desire, The Middle East in a Troubled Age, University of California Press 1999
Marc Lynch (ed.) The Arab Uprisings Explained. New Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Columbia University Press. 2014
Marc Lynch, The New Arab Wars. Uprisings and Anarchy in the Middle East. 2016
M. E. Mc Millan: From the First World War to the Arab Spring What’s Really Going On in the Middle East? Mc Millan 2016
Roger Owen, “The End of Empires: The Emergence of the Modern Middle Eastern States.” in State, Power and Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East
Edward Said. Orientalism New York: Vintage, 1987