"Nationalism and Nation-States in the Modern Middle East"
Maya Mikdashi, Associate Professor, Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality, Rutgers University
The Ottoman Empire ruled much of the Middle East for more than four hundred years, governing over a multi-ethnic and religiously diverse population. This seminar on the modern history of the Middle East will focus on the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the aftermath of World War One on the region. We will study the transition from the larger Ottoman Syria region into the British and French mandates over Lebanon and Syria, and Palestine, alongside the rise of competing forms of nationalism over the course of the nineteenth century and the creation of new nation states in the twentieth century, including Turkey. In this session, we will examine primary sources, explore how people experienced this tumultuous era, and reflect on how national identities are made and unmade. Finally, we will discuss how the partition of the Ottoman Empire [1918-1922] continues to animate political events and movements in the contemporary Middle East.