Courses

MW 2:20 PM–3:35 PM

3 credits

Course description: Introduction to the Turkic and Iranian peoples of Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. Introduces languages, literatures, and cultures; covers histories, religions, societies, trade, from past to present. No prior knowledge required.

Meets IUB GenEd S&H, IUB GenEd World Culture, COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry, and COLL (CASE) Culture Studies: Global Civ & Culture credits.

TuTh 5:30-6:45PM

3 credits

Course description: For over a millennium, monks, merchants, missionaries, envoys, and spies crossed the vast lands between China and the Caspian Sea, Russia and India, leaving behind tales that both revealed and distorted the ¿heart of Asia.¿ This course follows their journeys ¿ from the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang and the famed Arab geographers to Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Russian emissaries, and British adventurers of the Great Game.

Through close reading of travel diaries, mission reports, and memoirs (in translation from Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Russian, and other languages), students examine how outsiders described ¿ and sometimes invented ¿ the peoples and landscapes of Central Asia.

How did travelers construct knowledge about the region? What did they misunderstand or romanticize? How do their encounters help us read the entangled histories of empire, religion, and exploration?

Each week pairs historical context with primary sources, training students to treat travel narratives as windows into the past and mirrors of their authors¿ worlds. A role-playing AI-based project will accompany us throughout the semester.

By semester¿s end, you¿ll have journeyed from the Buddhist Silk Roads to the nineteenth-century Great Game, tracing how travelers turned Central Asia into both a crossroads of civilizations and a stage of imagination.

No textbooks are needed. Course materials are accessible on Canvas or through the IU Libraries.

TuTh 12:45PM-2:00PM

3 credits

Course description:Examines the Soviet experiment and its legacy in Central Asia through topics such as economic planning, nuclear testing, language policies, repression, and revival of Islam.

Meets COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit.

MW 2:20PM-3:35PM

3 credits

Course description: Examines the rise of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regional and superpower responses, and the implications for current and near-term US policy.

Meets COLL intensive writing credit.

MW 12:45PM-2:00PM

3 credits

Course description: This course offers a close study of ethnic history of Central Asia from the first centuries CE to the present time, focusing on the Islamic era. Central Asia is defined as the western part of Inner Asia; it stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to Eastern Turkestan (Xinjiang) in the east and belongs culturally to the Muslim world.

A crossroads of cultures and civilizations, home to the famous "Silk Roads," and the great connecting link between East Asia, South Asia, the Near East, and Eastern Europe, Central Asia was affected by numerous migrations and invasions of various nomadic peoples up to the 18th century. As a result of continuous movements of populations of different origins, a very complicated ethnic map of modern Central Asia emerged. During the 20th century, the interethnic relations in the region were further affected by the imperial policies of the Soviet Union and China, and by the rise of nationalism in the Central Asian republics.

In this course, we will discuss all these changes. We will provide a historical background for the understanding of interethnic relations in contemporary Central Asia; we will address different theories of ethnicity; migrations (voluntary and coerced) of peoples and their consequences, the formations of ethnic groups, the impact of imperial powers on the construction of ethnic identity, the relationship between ethnicity, nationalism and the modern state, ethnicity and language, ethnicity and religion, and the emergence of ethno-genesis in the independent republics of the former Soviet Union and neighboring regions. Special attention will be given to the Soviet typology of ethnicity and ethno-genesis as one of the most influential models for ethnic relations throughout Asia.

Meets COLL (CASE) Global Civ & Culture credit.

TuTh 11:10am - 12:25pm

3 credits

Course description: This undergraduate/graduate course explores Palestine and Palestinian life through the lens of of popular culture and mass media. This course proceeds from the idea that popular culture and media are foundational platforms for understanding Palestinian history, culture, and politics. Through our course readings, lectures, discussions, and various written assignments students will confront the many ways in which popular culture has had a formative and foundational impact upon conceptions of identity in Palestine, and on the ways in which Palestine and Palestinians are interpreted from a global perspective. Our readings will build upon fundamental anthropological understandings of social groups, the linkages of culture and agency, and the various forms of power and resistance articulated through expressive, performative, and media culture.

Meets COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry and COLL (CASE) Culture Studies: Global Civ & Culture credits.

MW 11:10AM - 12:25PM

3 credits

Course description: Survey course which examines some of the important problems and debates current in South Asian history. Topics covered range from the Neolithic period to the present day, and include the nature of ancient South Asian society, medieval Islamic empires, and British imperialism in the region.

Meets COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit.

TuTh 3:55-5:10pm

3 credits

Course description: This course explores the causes and consequences of global migration through the lens of race and racism. The course will focus on how people move across state borders while simultaneously crossing cultural, racial, and civilizational boundaries. We will investigate a number of questions in the course: What factors compel people to move and how are they received in their destination countries? Are some immigrants seen as more legitimate, desirable, or assimilable than others, and why? How does racism against immigrants in Europe and the US emerge as part of historical, social, and political processes? The course will be roughly divided into three phases. First, we will consider theoretical explanations for mobility and displacement as well as ways to think about the development processes that spur migration. The second part of the course will introduce theories of race, ethnicity, and racialization with a focus on anti Muslim and anti Black racism. Finally, the course will look at specific migration corridors around the world and cases of raced migration.

TuTh 9:35-10:50am

3 credits

Course description: In this course, we will look at the variety of new religious traditions from the late 19th century through today that we can define as ¿Black Nationalist¿ on the basis of concepts of nationhood, Black self-determination, and construction of ethnic identity, mainly in the United States, but also with reference to Black Nationalist movements elsewhere in the diaspora. We begin with the ¿Black Hebrew¿ movements of the late 19th century, the religious and philosophical thought of Marcus Garvey in the early 20th century, then move on to consider post-Garvey movements, such as the Moorish Science Temple, Nation of Islam, later Hebrew Israelite movements, Five Percent Nation/Nation of Gods and Earths, the Yoruba Temple and new African movements,  Nuwaubian Nation/Ansaaru Allah Community, and other related traditions. The focus will be on doctrine and practices of these movements, particularly their concepts of self, divinity, knowledge, nationhood, and race/ethnicity.

Meets COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit.