Search Results
Your search for courses · during 2025-26 · tagged with MEST Supporting Group 1 · returned 16 results
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ARCN 395 Archaeology: Science, Ethics, Nationalism and Cultural Property 6 credits
This seminar course will focus on a wide range of contemporary issues in archaeology, including case studies from many continents and time periods that shed light on archaeological theory and practice. Specific course content varies. The course serves as the capstone seminar for the Archaeology Minor; enrollment is also open to non-minors.
Not offered in 2025-26
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HIST 233 The Byzantine World and Its Neighbors 750-ca. 1453 6 credits
The Byzantine world (eighth-fifteenth centuries) was a zone of fascinating tensions, exchanges, and encounters. Through a wide variety of written and visual evidence, we will examine key features of its history and culture: the nature of government; piety and religious controversy; art and music; the evolving relations with the Latin West, Armenia, the Slavic North and West, and the Dar al-Islam (the Abbasids and Seljuk and Ottoman Turks); gender; economic life; and social relations.Extra Time for special events and a group project (ecumenical council).
Extra Time for special events and a group project (ecumenical council).
Not offered in 2025-26
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HIST 234 Constantinople, 1453: History, Experience, Narrative 6 credits
In the spring of 1453, the inhabitants of the city of Constantinople found themselves besieged and eventually conquered by the rising power of the Ottoman Turks. The density and variety of the surviving historical evidence offer a distinctive opportunity to explore and to understand the ways in which people, structures, interests, beliefs, and circumstances interacted to bring about this transformative event. The contemporary and, at times, eyewitness nature of the sources also pose profound questions about historical analysis, narrative, explanation, and story-telling. In this collaboration between the History department and the Theater program, we will develop our own historically informed narratives along with performances that do justice to the events' many facets and implications.
Extra Time Required: In preparation for the performance of our work, there may be one or two occasions when groups of students are asked to rehearse at a time other than class time.
- Spring 2026
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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HIST 260 The Making of the Modern Middle East 6 credits
A survey of major political and social developments from the fifteenth century to the beginning of World War I. Topics include: state and society, the military and bureaucracy, religious minorities (Jews and Christians), and women in premodern Muslim societies; the encounter with modernity.
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HIST 265 Russophone Studies in Central Asia: Central Asia in the Modern Age 6 credits
Central Asia–the region encompassing the post-Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and the Xinjiang region of the People’s Republic of China–is often considered one of the most exotic in the world, but it has experienced all the excesses of the modern age. After a basic introduction to the long-term history of the steppe, this course will concentrate on exploring the history of the region since its conquest by the Russian and Chinese empires. We will discuss the interaction of external and local forces as we explore transformations in the realms of politics, society, culture, and religion.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS Russophone Studies in Central Asia program.
Not offered in 2025-26
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Russophone Studies in Central Asia program.
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HIST 267 Muslims and Modernity 6 credits
Through readings in primary sources in translation, we will discuss the major intellectual and cultural movements that have influenced Muslim thinkers from the nineteenth century on. Topics include modernism, nationalism, socialism, and fundamentalism. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly.
Not offered in 2025-26
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HIST 360 Muslims and Modernity 6 credits
Through readings in primary sources in translation, we will discuss the major intellectual and cultural movements that have influenced Muslim thinkers from the nineteenth century on. Topics include modernism, nationalism, socialism, and fundamentalism. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly.
Not open to first year students. First year students should register in HIST 267.
Not offered in 2025-26
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One course in history of the Middle East or Central Asia or Islam with a grade of C- or better.
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POSC 235 The Endless War on Terror 6 credits
In the aftermath of 9/11, the U.S. launched the Global War on Terror to purportedly find, stop,and defeat every terrorist group with a global reach. Without question, the Global War on Terror has radically shaped everything from U.S. foreign policies and domestic institutions to civil liberties and pop culture. In this course, we will examine the events of 9/11 and then critically assess the immediate and long-term ramifications of the endless Global War on Terror on different states and communities around the world. While we will certainly spend time interrogating U.S. policies from the Bush, Obama, and Trump administrations, we will also examine reactions to those policies across both the global north and the global south.
Not offered in 2025-26
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POSC 280 Feminist Security Studies 6 credits
Feminist security studies question and challenge traditional approaches to international relations and security, highlighting the myriad ways that state security practices can actually increase insecurity for many people. How and why does this security paradox exist and how do we escape it? In this class, we will explore the theoretical and analytical contributions of feminist security scholars and use these lessons to analyze a variety of policies, issues, and conflicts. The cases that we will cover include the UN resolution on women, peace, and security, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy, violence against women, and conflicts in Syria, Uganda, and Yemen.
Extra time
Not offered in 2025-26
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POSC 282 Terrorism and Counterterrorism 6 credits
This course focuses on the historic and modern use of violence or the threat of violence by non-state actors to secure political outcomes. We will review the strategy and tactics of various terror groups, use case studies to understand the logic of terrorism, assess why some groups succeed while others fail, and study terrorist organizations’ efforts at recruitment and indoctrination. These topics will be addressed from theoretical and practical perspectives, with input from expert guest speakers. Finally, we will assess counterterrorism measures, including the moral, ethical, legal, and practical approaches to creating security in the modern world.
Not offered in 2025-26
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POSC 324 Rebels and Risk Takers: Women and War In the Middle East 6 credits
How are women (and gender more broadly) shaping and shaped by war and conflict in the Middle East? Far from the trope of the subjugated, veiled, and abused Middle Eastern woman, women in the Middle East are active social and political agents. In wars and conflicts in the Middle East region, women have, for example, been combatants, soldiers, activists, spies, homemakers, writers, and political leaders. This course surveys conflicts involving Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Israel, Jordan, and Iraq–along with Western powers like the U.S., UK, and Australia–through the wartime experiences of women.
- Winter 2026
- IS, International Studies SI, Social Inquiry
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RELG 162 Jesus, the Bible, and Christian Beginnings 6 credits
Who was Jesus? What’s in the Bible? How did Christianity begin? This course is an introduction to the ancient Jewish texts that became the Christian New Testament, as well as other texts that did not make it into the Bible. We will take a historical approach, situating this literature within the Roman Empire of the first century, and we will also learn about how modern readers have interpreted it. Along the way, we will pay special attention to two topics of enduring political debate: (1) Whether the Bible supports oppression or liberation and (2) What the Bible says about gender and sexuality.
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RELG 235 Religion and Identity in the Medieval Middle East 6 credits
This course explores the emergence and formation of Islam as a faith in the medieval Middle East (sixth-eleventh centuries) and its impact on social relations and identities in the complex and evolving cultural and religious communities that populated this multifaceted region. Through close reading and discussion of primary sources (in translation) (Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Persian, Greek, and Latin) and scholarship, we will situate the development of Islam in the context of religious and social change in this period and to understand Islam’s role in the transformation of life in the region.
Not offered in 2025-26
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RELG 266 Modern Islamic Thought 6 credits
Through close reading of primary sources, this course examines how some of the most influential Muslim thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the Middle East and South Asia conceptualized God and the ideal God-human relationship to address such pressing questions as: How should religion relate to modern technological and scientific advancements? Can Islam serve as an ideology to counter European colonialism? Can Islam become the basis for the formation of social and political life under a nation-state, or does it demand a transnational political collectivity of its own? What would a modern Islamic economy look like?
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RELG 322 Apocalypse How? 6 credits
When will the world end, and how? What’s wrong with the world that makes its destruction necessary or inevitable? Are visions of “The End” a form of resistance literature, aimed at oppressive systems? Or do they come from paranoid minds disconnected from reality? This seminar explores apocalyptic thought, which in its basic form is about unmasking the deceptions of the given world by revealing the secret workings of the universe. We begin with ancient Jewish and Christian apocalypses and move into modern religious and “secular” visions of cosmic collapse, including doomsday cults, slave revolts, UFO religions, and Evangelical fantasies about armageddon in the Middle East. We will also create a giant handwritten manuscript of the book of Revelation using calligraphy pens, paint, and gold leaf.
X-List WMST 322
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SOAN 201 Colonialism, Oil, And The War On Terror: The Global Middle East 6 credits
Through processes like colonialism, oil extraction, and the war on terror, the Middle East forms an important pivot, shaping global political and economic structures. This course will examine how the Middle East has developed in dynamic interaction with the wider globe. Yet, we will resist the urge to treat the Middle East merely as an object of Western intervention. Rather, we will explore how the West and wider globe are also shaped by this interaction. In particular, we will examine how ideas about modernity, secularism, and liberalism—key elements of contemporary Western identity—are shaped through dynamic interconnection with Middle East.
Not offered in 2025-26