State and Society in the Middle East

The establishment and development of Middle Eastern political systems; social and political processes including the end of empires, formation of nation-states, and their foreign policies." This course will provide an overview of the transformation of the Arab Middle East, Iran and Turkey in the 19th-20th century. Focusing on the theme of social and institutional continuity, it will treat the Ottoman reform period, the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the Arab awakening and the development of Arab and other nationalisms, the European mandate regimes, decolonisation, the theory and practice of pan-Arabism, Israel and the Palestinian question, problems of economic and cultural dependency, and final the processes of democratization and political Islamism in the Middle East today.KU course # HIST 309