 2016 - 2017 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 0622-2001-01 | Introduction to Social & Cutural History of the Middle East | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
In one of his books, Egyptian writer Tawfiq al-Hakim presents a country prostitute charged with soliciting the public. “The public?” she replies angrily, “I do not know and never slept with anyone by that name!” Instead of accepting notions like “public” or “society” as given and natural, the course will explore their development and implications in the modern Middle East. During the semester, we will examine different social and gender groups via a variety of scholarly perspectives, including history of the senses and emotions, history of science and technology, urban history and more, using a large spectrum of written, recorded, and photographed primary and secondary sources. We will ask how can social history not only reflect a wide array of voices and dispositions of actors in the past, but also serve as a public utility today.