GWS551

038821

The Middle East region is often portrayed as a patriarchal, misogynist, and violent place in Western discourse. Terror, violence against women, and honor killings are increasingly popular topics of popular and academic interest in the region. Approaching these issues from a critical perspective this class seeks to answer: What are the power dynamics of gender relations in the Middle East? What are the gendered contours of the different forms of collective violence in the region? What are the limits and problems of the Western modes of thinking about gender and violence in the Middle East? How can we better understand the various gendered violence practices associated with the region without reproducing Orientalist and racist discourses?

Throughout the semester, we will use historical and ethnographic texts, films and documentaries, fictive and journalistic writing to address these questions from an interdisciplinary perspective. Course material will engage with a variety of issues, including honor killings, female \"circumcision\" controversy, LGBT issues, and military masculinity, in contexts ranging from Turkey to Palestine/Israel, and Lebanon to Algeria.

Graduate Students are expected to read additional texts, write additional reading responses, and will write a 20 page research paper which will be worth 40% of the final grade.

GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E

Graduate

CE - CL (Cross Listed)

GWS451