Overview

The events of the last two decades in the Middle East have not only led to revolutionary outcomes but also to civil wars, to dictatorship exerted by representatives of ethno-religious majorities and to a large-scale refugee’s crisis.

With an interactive methodology and student’s participation in the program, throughout the course and in multidisciplinary perspectives we will pose several essential questions that Middle Eastern societies and political borders face.

With a political and theoretical background, the course will discuss the nature of the modern Middle Eastern states, the history of its twentieth century and the practices that characterized the legal and political life in the region. The theoretical perspective of the course will focus on the relationship between the state and the dictator in modern Arab times, between state and ideology in a one-party-system as well as the observation and discussion of young movements and initiatives in the contemporary Arab world. The main engagement will be with the definition of civil society and its potential role in any social and political cohesion.

The tangible and intangible heritage in the Middle East through archeological and anthropological insights will also be discussed in this course. From antiquity to medieval then to modern times, temples and religions have always occupied physical and mental spaces in the shaping of Middle Eastern identities and communities. An overview of interreligious violence in the region’s history will
complete the reflection offered by the course on conflictuality and on future of democratic and political perspectives.

This online course/seminar will analyze the Arab Spring in light of the questions of the Arab world’s politics which had contributed to its making and transitions. Also, the course will be focused on the agency of the political art of the Arab Spring, such as graffiti, murals, and digital street art. It will analyze such arts in Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Yemen, and Libya.