NELC 496/596 B Spring 2008 Selim S. Kuru Office Hours: M 1:30-3:30 W 2-4:50 Denny Hall 213 selims@u.washington.edu Methodologies in Near Eastern Studies SYLLABUS COURSE
DESCRIPTION This course is a seminar that investigates the prevalent approaches adopted in contemporary scholarship on the Near and Middle East. In this course students will be exposed to a variety of scholarly studies concerning the region, and how this region is imagined, considered and formulated by scholars working on different communities, spheres of culture and time periods. IMPORTANT
NOTICE There
will be one extra meeting on Friday April 11th, at the Suzzallo Library on
basic reference material concerning Near and Middle Eastern Studies at 1-3
PM. Students must be present at this
meeting. There will be no class April 23 and 30. There will be make-up classes for these dates on May 2 and 23 at 2:00-4:30 PM. The location will be announced. Students must attend these make-up classes. Students should use this break to prepare for their presentations and outline their research papers while working in study groups. During this period, I will be reachable via e-mail should you have any questions.
READING
MATERIAL The required reading material is limited and these will be at the Odegaard Reserve for students. All three books are available online through the UW Library Catalogue: 1. Zachary Lockman, Contending
Visions of the 2. Richard Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel. 3. Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts Each student will also select a book that is related to her/his interests and which can be assigned for another class to work on by the second week of classes. The students must schedule a meeting with instructor to discuss their choice of reading material before the second meeting of the class at the latest. REQUIREMENTS Each student will prepare: 1) a 1000/1500-word book review, 2) a 30-minute long presentation, and 3) a 15-20 page research paper. GRADING Research Paper 30% Presentation 25% Book Review 15% Participation 30% These assignments will follow a natural progression from the beginning to the end of the course. First, the book review will prepare the student for the presentation, meanwhile allowing him/her practice writing a book review. The book presentation will give the student a chance to work on her/his paper presentation skills with particular stress on time consideration, development of the argument, clarity of presentation and the ability to lead the discussion during a question and answer session; all of these will be considered while grading. Finally, the research paper will be the culmination of this process of thinking, outlining, argument development and discussion through writing. 1) Book Review: The book review will be written on the same book the student selects for her/his presentation. The student should schedule a meeting with the instructor and have the title approved by him. The review will include a bibliography of previously published reviews of the work. Students will gather and photocopy reviews of the book which will be presented along with the book review. The book reviews will be 1000-1500 words in length. While preparing for this assignment, students must follow certain guidelines for writing a professional book review. Students may use review articles published in The Bulletin of Middle Eastern Studies Association and The International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies as models. Book reviews will be submitted on Wednesday, May 2nd in class and also e-mailed to the instructor. Late submissions will not be accepted. Book reviews will be peer reviewed anonymously as follows: Instructor will e-mail each book review to another student and the student will work and comment on the work anonymously and send their comments on their classmate’s review back to the instructor no later than May 1st. 2) Presentation: Each student will deliver a presentation on the book which s/he reviews. Electronic versions of the book review will be circulated to all students in the class one week before the presentation, and the book will also be made available with selected pages to be read (not exceeding 30-40 pages for each presentation). Students will read the other students’ book reviews, skim through the extra reading material and prepare questions for the presenter. During each class period there will be 3 or 4 presentations, and each student must ask at least one well-formed question to one presenter and submit five questions to the instructor. This will count towards the participation grade. Student presentations will not exceed 30 minutes. 3) Research Paper: The research papers will be the discussion of the presentation material with reference to the books that are covered in the class and other presentations. Each paper must have a clear argument regarding the prevalent approaches in Middle and Near Eastern studies and specifically the topic that is discussed in the presentation of the student. Focus of the presentation must be the approach of the author(s) discussed. Deadline for research papers
is June 12th, 2008. The research papers will be 10-15 full pages for
undergraduates and 15 to 20 for graduate students (double-spaced, Times New
Roman, 12 point font, default page borders). DISCUSSION
POINTS Each selection will be read and evaluated in reference to the following questions: 1. What are the geographical boundaries of topics discussed by the author(s)? 2. Is there a discussion of a particular methodology and/or theoretical approach in the text? If there is, what sort of references does the author present; what corpus of works, hypotheses, or personal experiences does s/he draw on? What kind of a tradition does s/he connect to her/his work? The answers for these questions are generally found in the introduction of the classes. 3. Who is the author of the book in review, what other works s/he has produced? 4. If there is not a specific discussion of methodological concerns and theoretical approaches, can we glean those through a detailed analysis of the work? What are our tools to identify methodologies and theoretical concerns, or lack of them? Students must go beyond the information in the books to discover the underlying premises, hypotheses, discursive constructions and theoretical frameworks. |