Instructor: Candace Lukasik
Term: Summer 2019 Session: D
Time: M, T, W, Th 12:00pm-1:59pm
What is the sociopolitical history through which the Middle East has come to occupy particular images within Western popular and political imaginaries? How have geopolitical interventions in the region affected the ways religion is practiced? What are the different sites by which we can look at and engage religion, in its diverse forms, across the Middle East? This course focuses on religion in the modern Middle East, from the seventeenth century to the contemporary period. It explores the different ways in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews have interpreted and put into practice their religious traditions through historical and anthropological analyses. The course will heavily engage literary interpretations of historical change, inter-communal relations, and war. Beginning with debate on the representation of Islam and religious life in the region more generally, the course will address contemporary transformations of religious experience, and widen student perspectives beyond stereotypes of the Middle East and its religious traditions