B2890 - INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS OF THE MIDDLE EAST

Learning outcomes

The course aims at providing students with an overview of the system of international relations in the Middle East. At the end of the course students will be knowledgeble about the main issues and problems of MENA International Relations : main factors in state and nation building processes in the area (identity, religion, natural resources); the main regional conflicts and their interaction with global conflicts such as the Cold War, or the global war on terror; roots of domestic political instability in the region, in both Middle Eastern secular republics and theocratic Gulf States, and their impact on regional confictuality and international relations.

Course contents

The course is organized in lectures and seminars, as detailed in the following program. Lectures will aim at introducinfg students to the core tenets of the discipline. Seminars will provide occasions for in-depth discussions of class materials and exercises.

Course attendance requires a conspicuous amount of INDEPENDENT STUDY in order to assimile the contents OUTLINED in the frontal lessons (16 hours, plenary mode: it makes for an integral component of the course and characterizes the chosen pedagogical method (flipped-classrom).

For the seminar section of the course, students will be divided in two groups, A & B (12 hours each), for a total of 28 hours of class attendance for each student. Students are required to carefully read the assigned material before the session and - in the case of seminars - active participation through presentations of existing scholarship and case studies will also be expected.

The course include the following lectures and thematic seminars:

Lecture 1- International Relations, Area Studies, and the Middle East.

Lecture 2- The Making of a Foreign Policy: State and Society.

Lecture 3- The Middle East in the post First World War State-System

Lecture 4- The Middle in the Cold War.

Lecture 5- The transformations of the Middle Eastern Regional System from the Seventies to the End of the Cold War (1)

Lecture 6- The transformations of the Middle Eastern Regional System from the Seventies to the End of the Cold War (2)

Lecture 7- Political Economy of Oil and ME International Relations.

Lecture 8- The post-bipolar Middle East: the roots of the Arab Revolts.

Seminar 1 Group A & B- International Relations and the Middle East, beyond the Gap Between Discipline and Area Studies.

Seminar 2 Group A & B- The Versailles Treaty: impact on ME future structure and stability.

Seminar 3 Group A&B- The Middle East in 1958, a Revolutionary Year.

Seminar 4 Group A & B- War and Order in the Middle East: the Arab-Israeli Conflict

Seminar 5 Group A&B- Conflicts at the periphery of the Arab core: the Gulf Wars

Seminar 6 Group A & B- Political Economy of Oil in the ME- Post-rentierism.

Readings/Bibliography

Louise Fawcett, International Relations of the Middle East, Oxford University Press (6th edition), forthcoming

Raymond Hinnebusch, The International Politics of the Middle East. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2003 (available also in Italian: Raymond Hinnebusch, La politica internazionale del Medio Oriente. Bologna: Il Ponte, 2010), chaps. 1,2,7,8.

Fred Halliday, The Middle East in International Relations: Power, Politics, and Ideology. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2005. (Available also in Italian as Fred Halliday, Il Medio Oriente, Potere, Politica e Ideologia. Milano: V&P, 2007), chapter 2.

For a historical overview (highly recommended to those who did not take a minor/major in History of the Modern Middle East before):

William Cleveland and Martin Bunton, A History of the Modern Middle East, Sixth Edition, Routledge, 2016 (also available in in Italian as Storia del Medio Oriente moderno, Mondadori Education, 2021)

Seminar readings, with related key questions and activities, will be available on VIRTUALE.

Non attending students must agree on a customized bibliography focusing on a preferred topic among those covered during the course. THEY ARE REQUESTED TO CONTACT THE LECTURER, EITHER BY EMAIL OR DURING OFFICE HOURS, NO LATER THAN WEEK 4 (hard deadline).

The following resources can be used productively to research on various topics in history, politics and international relations of the Modern Middle East.

http://jadaliyya.com [http://jadaliyya.com/] [ indipendent e-by ASI, Arab Studies Institute]

http://merip.org [http://merip.org/] [Middle East Research and Information Project]

http://w3fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/ [MESA homepage]

http://www.albawaba.com/ [Albawaba Middle East gateway]

http://www.mideast.org/ [Middle East Institute]

http://menic.utexas.edu/menic.html [Centre for ME Studies, Univ of Texas at Austin]

http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/ [Al-Ahram Weekly]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/ [BBC World Service]

Academic journal specialized in Middle Eastern Studies:

British Journal of Middle East Studies

Bulletin (British Society of Middle Eastern Studies)

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies

International Journal of Middle East Studies

Journal of Palestine Studies

Middle East Report

MERIP Middle East Report

MERIP Reports

Access to these journal is free for all UNIBO students via the University Library System (see how to connect by remote to the Uni server in order to access these resources when you're not on campus

http://www.sba.unibo.it/it/almare/servizi-e-strumenti-almare/connessione-da-remoto

Teaching methods

Lectures and seminar group discussions. 

The course is part of the experimental Departmental project for teaching innovation. As such, it adopts s flipped classroom approach in small-group seminars.

Assessment methods

Final oral exam (100% of the final grade). 

Teaching tools

Pc, maps, slides.

Office hours

See the website of Francesca Biancani