coursemapLoading course
Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
This course aims at equipping Honours students with a good understanding of how to conduct research on the Middle East and Central Asia regions and their Diasporas. The course will interrogate some unexamined framings that shape the understanding of the Middle East and Central Asia including debunking the idea of the regions’ ‘exceptionalism’. It encourages a historical, contextualising of the regions and the various trends and forces that have marked social, political and economic developments. The course is designed around six big issues that affect people from the region in their locality and globally. The course is organised to be taught fortnightly with students critically reflecting on each week’s big issue with a research piece to harness their understanding and analytical skills.
Class Participation
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 4
Five Fortnightly Reflective Papers (1000 word each and 10% each)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Essay (4000 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
130 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 12 hours of contact over 12 weeks: 2 hours of seminars per week; and b) 118 hours of independent student research, reading and writing.
Not applicable Preliminary Reading Tessler, M. A. et al Area Studies and Social Science: Strategies for Understanding the Middle East. (Indiana: IUP 1999). Tihawi Smith, L. (1999) Decolonising Methodology: Research and Indigenous People. London: Zed Books. Janine A. Clark & Francesco Cavatorta. (Eds.) (2018) Political Science Research in the Middle East and North Africa: Methodological and Ethical Challenges. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018). Sharabi, H. Neopatriarchy: A Theory of Distorted Change in Arab Society. OUP 1988. Cummings, S. N. Understanding Central Asia: Politics and Contested Transformations. (Routledge: Abingdon, 2012). Stephan-Emmrich M. and Schröder, P. eds., Mobilities, Boundaries, and Travelling Ideas: Rethinking Translocality beyond Central Asia and the Caucasus. Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2018.