HIST 318 - Straits, States, and Waterways in the Modern Middle East

This course will consider the deeply entangled relationships between the management, control, and engineering of waterways, on the one hand, and postcolonial state formation, on the other. The course will begin by introducing students to environmental history methods and literature, particularly around water engineering and policy across different national contexts, as well as new and emerging scholarship on environmental histories in SWANA (Southwest Asia and North Africa). We will then move through four case studies in which waterways served as central sites of political contestation and state-building projects: the Strait of Gibraltar; the Suez Canal; the Nile River and the Aswan High Dam; and the Strait of Hormuz. Each of these will focus in particular on the ways postcolonial political regimes have employed diverse strategies of control over major waterways in order to construct national identity, assert sovereignty, centralize state power, and negotiate complex global relationships with both regional neighbors and former colonial powers. Through this course, students will gain an introduction to key questions in environmental history, how nature, geography, and non-human actors fundamentally shape political destinies, as well as an introduction to the political and cultural histories of the Middle East from WWII to the present.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): HUM 110 or sophomore standing
Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Evaluate data and/or sources.
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other.
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.