MES4000 - Autumn 2017

Syllabus/achievement requirements

Theory and project description

Seminar No. I (August 16^th, at UiO): Introduction - What is Research?

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008. [pages 1-276].

Seminar No. II (August 21^th, at UiO): What is Research? (cont.)

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008. [pages 1-276].

Seminar No. III (August 22^th, at UiO): What is Research? (cont.)

Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams. The Craft of Research. 3rd ed. Chicago, London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008. [pages 1-276].

Seminar No. IV (August 28-30^that Granavolden): Debating Middle East Studies

Mitchell, Timothy. "The Middle East in the Past and Future of Social Science." In The Politics of Knowledge: Area Studies and the Disciplines, edited by David L. Szanton. (Berkeley: University of California Press), 74-118. [Available in Fronter].
Kramer, Martin. “Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America.” (Washington, D. C.: WINEP, 2001), 1-4.
Heydemann, Steve. “Middle East Studies After 9/11,” Journal of Democracy 13, No. 3 (2002): 102-108.
Karawān, Ibrāhīm. “Time for an Audit,” Journal of Democracy 13, No. 3 (2002): 96-101,
Burke III, Edmund. “Wanted: A Comparative History of the Modern Mediterranean.” Review of Middle East Studies 46, No. 1 (2012): 47-53.
Gause III, F. Gregory. “Why Middle East Studies Missed the Arab Spring: The Myth of Authoritarian Stability.” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (2011): 81-90.

Seminar No. V (August 28-30^that Granavolden): Orientalism

Said, Edward W. “Orientalism Reconsidered”. Cultural Critique 1 (1985): 89-107.
Lewis, Bernard. “The Question of Orientalism”. The New York Review of Books, June 24,1982.
Halliday, Fred. “‘Orientalism’ and its critics”. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 20, no. 2 (1993): 145-163.
Makdisi, Ussama. “Ottoman Orientalism”. The American Historical Review 107, no. 3 (2002): 768-796.

Seminar No. VI (August 28-30^that Granavolden): The Rentier State

Beblawi, Hazem. “The rentier state in the Arab world”. Arab Studies Quarterly 9, no. 4 (1987): 383-398. [Available via Fronter].
Skocpol, Theda. “Rentier state and Shi'a Islam in the Iranian Revolution”. Theory and society 11, no. 3 (1982): 265-283.
Hertog, Steffen. “The Sociology of the Gulf Rentier Systems: Societies of Intermediaries”. Comparative Studies in Society and History 52, no. 2 (2010): 282-318.
Ross, Michael L. “Will Oil Drown the Arab Spring?, Foreign Affairs 90, no. 5 (2011): 2-7.

Seminar No. VII (August 28-30^that Granavolden): Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Hinnebusch, Raymond. “Authoritarian Persistence, Democratization Theory and the Middle East: An Overview and Critique.” Democratization 13, no. 3 (2006): 373-395.
Posusney, Marsha Pripstein. “Enduring Authoritarianism: Middle East Lessons for Comparative Theory”. Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 127-138.
Bellin, Eva. “The Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Exceptionalism in Comparative Perspective.” Comparative Politics 36, no. 2 (2004): 139-157.
King, Stephen J. “Sustaining Authoritarianism in the Middle East and North Africa.” Political Science Quarterly 122, no. 3 (2007): 433-459.

Seminar No. VIII (August 28-30^that Granavolden): Why the Arab Uprisings?

Bellin, Eva. “Reconsidering the Robustness of Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Lessons from the Arab Spring,” Comparative Politics 44, No. 2 (2012): 127-149.
Heydemann, Steven. “Explaining the Arab Uprisings: transformations in comparative perspective,” Mediterranean Politics 21, no. 1 (2016): 192-204.
Campante, Filipe R. and Davin Chor. “Why was the Arab World Poised for Revolution? Schooling, Economic Opportunities, and the Arab Spring”. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 26, no. 2 (2012): 167-187.
Leenders, Reinoud. “Social Movement Theory and the Onset of the Popular Uprising in Syria." Arab Studies Quarterly 35, no. 3 (2013): 273-289.

Seminar No. IX (August 28-30^that Granavolden): Research Ethics

The Norwegian National Research Ethics Committees. "Guidelines for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences, Humanities, Law and Theology." Oslo, 2016.
Lee Ann Fujii, "Research Ethics 101: Dilemmas and Responsibilities", PS: Political Science & Politics 45, No. 4 (2012): 717-723.

Seminar No. X (September 4th at UiO): Neopatriarchy and Gender

Sharabi, Hisham. “The Dialectics of Patriarchy in Arab Society,” In Arab Society: Continuity and Change, edited by Samih K. Farsoun, 83-104. London: Croom Helm, 1985. [Available in Fronter].
Badran, Margot. “Islam, Patriarchy, and Feminism in the Middle East”. Trends in History 4, no. 1 (1986): 49-71.
Roald, Anne Sofie. “‘Benevolent Patriarchy’: Palestinian Women between ‘Ideal’ and ‘Reality’”. Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 24, no. 3 (2013): 333-347.
Bahramitash, Roksana & Jennifer C. Olmsted. “Choice and Constraint in Paid Work: Women from Low-Income Households in Tehran”. Feminist Economics 20, no. 4 (2014): 260-280.

Seminar No. XI (September 6th at UiO): Tribalism and Kinship

Crone, Patricia. “Tribes and States in the Middle East.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 3, no. 3 (1993): 353-76.
Antoun, Richard T. “Civil Society, Tribal Process, and Change in Jordan: An Anthropological View.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 4 (2000): 441-463.
Tuastad, Dag. "Nationalist Patriarchy, Clan Democracy: How the political trajectories of Palestinians in Israel and the Occupied Territories have been reversed." Die Welt des Islams 57, no.3-4 (2017). [Available in Fronter].
Chatty, Dawn. "The Bedouin in Contemporary Syria: The Persistence of Tribal Authority and Control." Middle East Journal 64, no. 1 (2010): 29-49.

Seminar No. XII (September 11^th at UiO): (Neo)patrimonalism, Clientelism, Informal Rule

Lust, Ellen. “Competitive Clientelism in the Middle East”. Journal of Democracy 20, no. 3 (2009): 122-135.
Brynen, Rex. "The Neopatrimonial Dimension of Palestinian Politics," Journal of Palestine Studies 25, No. 1 (1995): 23-36.
Springborg, Robert. “Patrimonialism and Policy Making in Egypt: Nasser and Sadat and the Tenure Policy for Reclaimed Lands”. Middle Eastern Studies 15, no. 1 (1979): 49-69.
Charrad, Mounira M. “Central and Local Patrimonialism: State-Building in Kin-Based Societies”. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 636 (2011): 49-68.

Seminar No. XIII (September 13^th at UiO): Social Movement Theory: The Case of Islamist Movements

Wiktorowicz, Quintan. “A New Approach to the Study of Islamic Activism.” IIAS Newsletter, no. 33 (March 2004): 13. [Available in Fronter].
Kurzman, Charles. “Structural Opportunity and Perceived Opportunity in Social-Movement Theory: The Iranian Revolution of 1979”. American Sociological Review 61, no. 1 (1996): 153-170.
Clark, Janine. “Social Movement Theory and Patron-Clientelism: Islamic Social Institutions and the Middle Class in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen”. Comparative Political Studies 37, no. 8 (2004): 941-968.
Wicktorowicz, Quintan. “Framing Jihad: Intramovement Framing Contests and al-Qaeda’s Struggle for Sacred Authority”. International Review of Social History 49 (2004): 159-177.
Tu?al, Cihan Z. “The Appeal of Islamic Politics: Ritual and Dialogue in a Poor District of Turkey”. The Sociological Quarterly 47, no. 2 (2006): 245–273.

Seminar No. XIV (October 23^that UiO): Literature and Politics in the Middle East

Kendall, Elisabeth. “Does Literature Matter? The Relationship between Literature and Politics in Revolutionary Egypt”. In Studying Modern Arabic Literature: Mustafa Badawi, Scholar and Critic, edited by Robin Ostle & Roger Allen, 194-217. Edinburgh University Press, 2015.
Allen, Roger. “Lords of misrule: history and fiction in two Moroccan novels”. Middle Eastern Literatures 9, no. 2 (2006): 199-209.
Granara, William. “Mythologising the Algerian war of independence: Tahir Wattar and the contemporary Algerian novel”. The Journal of North African Studies 4, no. 3 (1999): 1-14.
Guth, Stephan. “Avatar and ?Azāzīl – Western and Middle Eastern patterns of individual revolt.” In La littérature à l'heure du Printemps arabe, edited by Sobhi Boustani, Rasheed El-Enany and Walid Hamarneh, 53-86. Paris: Karthala, 2016.

Seminar No.XV (October 25^th at UiO): The Politics of Language in the Middle East

Brendemoen, Bernt. "The Turkish Language Reform and Language Policy in Turkey". In Handbuch der türkischen Sprachwissenschaft, Teil I, edited by Gy?rgy Hazai, 454-493. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1990. [Available in Fronter].
Kia, Mehrdad. "Persian nationalism and the campaign for language purification." Middle Eastern Studies 34, no 2 (1998): 9-36.
Nahir, Moshe. “Micro Language Planning and the Revival of Hebrew: A Schematic Framework”. Language in Society 27, no. 3 (1998): 335-357.
Benrabah, Mohamed. “Competition between four “world” languages in Algeria.” Journal of World Languages 1 , no. 1 (2014): 38-59.

Seminar No.XVI (October 30^th at UiO): Project Description Workshop

Seminar No.XVII (November 1^rd at UiO): Project Description Workshop

Seminar No.XVIII (November 6^th at UiO): Project Description Workshop

Seminar No.XIX (November 8th at UiO): Project Description Workshop (if needed).

Seminar No.XX (November 13th at UiO): Project Description Workshop (if needed).

Modules:

Text and Discourse Analysis

(By Associate Professor Jacob H?igilt)

Blommaert, Jan. “Context Is/as Critique.” Critique of Anthropology 21, no. 1 (2001): 13–32.

Fowler, Roger. Language in the News. Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Routledge, 1991. [Chapters 1, 5, 7] [Electronically available via Fronter].

H?igilt, Jacob. Islamist Rhetoric: Language and Culture in Contemporary Egypt. London: Routledge, 2011. [Chapter 4] [Electronically available via Fronter].

McKee, Alan. Textual Analysis. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2003.

Skinner, Quentin. Visions of Politics: Regarding Method, Volume 1. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2002. [Chapters 5-6] [Electronically available via Fronter].

Field Work Methods

(By Professor Berit Thorbj?rnsrud)

Tedlock, Barbara. “From Participant Observation to the Observation of Participation: The Emergence of Narrative Ethnography”. Journal of Anthropological Research 47, no. 1 (1991): 69-94.
El-Solh, Camillia Fawzi. “Gender, Class, and Origin. Aspects of Role During Fieldwork in Arab society”. In Arab Women in the Field. Studying Your Own Society, edited by Soraya Altorki & Camillia Fawzi El-Solh. 91-115. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 1988.
Romano, David. “Conducting Research in the Middle East’s Conflict Zones”. Political Science and Politics 39, no. 3 (2006): 439-441.
Sanghera, Gurchathen S. and Suruci Thapar-Bj?rkert. “Methodological dilemmas: gatekeepers and positionality in Bradford”. Ethical and Racial Studies 31, no. 3 (2008): 543-562.
Roulston, Kathryn; Kathleen deMarrais and Jamie B. Lewis. “Learning to Interview in the Social Sciences”. Qualitative Inquiry 9, no. 4 (2003): 643-668.
Lund-Johansen, Marie Brokstad. Fighting for Citizenship in Kuwait. MA Thesis. University of Oslo, 2014. [Chapter 1.5-1-7: “Explaining Bidoon mobilisation: Methodological approach”, page 16-30].
Brown, Michael F. “Cultural Relativism 2.0”. Current Anthropology 49, no. 3 (2008): 363-383.
Abdel-Fadil, Mona. Living the ‘Message’ and Empowering Muslim Selves: A Behind the Screens study of Online Islam. PhD dissertation. University of Oslo, 2012. [Only “‘Studying sideways’: reflections on methodology”, page 9-61].
Narayan, Uma. “Cross-Cultural Connections, Border-Crossings, and ‘Death by Culture’. Thinking About Dowry-Murders in India and Domestic-Violence Murders in the United States”. In Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism (New York: Routledge, 1997), 81-118.
Suleiman, Yasir and Paul Anderson. "Conducting Fieldwork in the Middle East’: Report of a Workshop held at the University of Edinburgh on 12 February 2007". British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 35, no. 2 (2008): 151-171.
Aberbach, Joel D. and Bert A. Rockman. “Conducting and Coding Elite Interviews", PS: Political Science and Politics 35, no. 4 (2002): 673-676.
McNeill, Desmond. “Statistics—the Development Researcher's Guilty Secret”, Forum for Development Studies 27, no. 1 (2000): 145-150.
Valenzuela, Dapsury & Pallavi Shrivastava. “Interview as a method for qualitative research”. Arizona State University (undated). Student presentation.

(270 pages)

Archive Studies and Historical Methods

(By Professor Brynjar Lia)

Methods in Historical Research (Seminar 1 & 2)

Howell, Martha and Walter Prevenier. From Reliable Sources: An Introduction to Historical Methods. Ithaca & London: Cornell Univ. Press, 2001 [Chapter 1-5, pages 17-150].
Carr, David. “Narrative Explanation and Its Malcontents”. History and Theory 47, no. 1 (2008): 19-30.
Dibble, Vernon K. “Four Types of Inference from Documents to Events”. History and Theory 3, no. 2 (1963): 203-221.
Skocpol, Theda and Margaret Somers. "The Uses of Comparative History in. Macrosocial Inquiry." Comparative Studies in Society and History 22, no. 2 (1980): 174-197.
Shepart, Todd. “‘History Is Past Politics’? Archives, ‘Tainted Evidence,’ and the Return of the State.” The American Historical Review 115, no. 2 (2010):474-483.
Findlay, Cassie. "People, records and power: what archives can learn from WikiLeaks." Archives and Manuscripts 41, no. 1 (2013): 7-22.

Sources, Archives and Archival Research in the Middle East (Seminar 3 & 4)

Amour, Philipp O. “Practical, Theoretical, and Methodological Challenges of Field Research in the Middle East”. Historical Methods: A Journal of Quantitative and Interdisciplinary History 45, no. 3 (2012): 143-149.
Omar, Hussein. “The State of the Archive: Manipulating Memory in Modern Egypt and the Writing of Egyptological Histories.” In: Histories of Egyptology: Interdisciplinary Measures, edited by William Carruthers, 175-83. New York, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015. [available in Fronter].
Peled, Kobi. "Oral testimonies, archival sources, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War: A close look at the occupation of a Galilean village". Journal of Israeli History: Politics, Society, Culture 33, no. 1 (2014): 41-61.
Sayigh, Rosemary. “Oral history, colonialist dispossession, and the state: the Palestinian case”. Settler Colonial Studies 5, no. 3 (2015): 193-204.
?zok-Gündo?an, Nilay. “The Archive as a ‘Collective Project’.” International Journal of Middle East Studies 49, no. 3 (2017): 529-533
Frampton, Martyn and Ehud Rosen. “Reading the Runes? The United States and the Muslim Brotherhood as seen through the Wikileaks Cables”, The Historical Journal 56, no. 3 (2013): 827-856. (321 pages)
Lebovich, Andrea. “The Challenge of Contemporary Historical Research in Algeria”. Textures du temps (10 August 2015). [5 pages].
Edmund Burke III. “The Creation of the Moroccan Colonial Archive, 1880–1930”. History and Anthropology 18, no. 1 (2007): 1-9.
Lydon, Ghislaine. “Slavery, Exchange and Islamic Law: A Glimpse from the Archives of Mali and Mauritania”. African Economic History, no. 33 (2005): 117-148.

Topics in Linguistic Studies

(By Professor Stephan Guth and Bernt Brendemoen)

Seminar I (B. Brendemoen)

Halvor Eifring & Rolf Theil: Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages, 2005. Chap. 4: Linguistic typology. 19 p.

Seminar II (S. Guth)

Coulmas, Florian: Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers' Choices, 2005. Chapter 1 (Introduction: Notions of language), pp. 1-14.
Walters, Keith. "Language attitudes". EALL online (ca. 15 p.)
Ferguson, Charles: "Diglossia". Word 15, (1959), pp.325-40. (16 p.)
Coulmas, Florian: Sociolinguistics: The Study of Speakers' Choices, 2005. Chapters 8 (Diglossia and bilingualism: Functional restrictions on language choice), pp. 126-145.

Seminar III (B. Brendemoen)

Halvor Eifring & Rolf Theil: Linguistics for Students of Asian and African Languages, 2005. Chap. 6: Language Contact. 30p.

Seminar IV (S. Guth)

Mejdell, Gunvor. 2006. "Codeswitching". EALL online (ca. 8 p.)
Palva, Heikki: "Arabic dialects: classification". EALL online (ca. 12 p.)
Ibrahim, Muhammad H.: "Standard and Prestige Language: A Problem in Arabic Sociolinguistics". Anthropological Linguistics, 28 (1) (Spring, 1986), pp. 115-126. ( 12p. )
Manal A. Ismail, "Sociocultural Identity and Arab Women's and Men's Code-Choice in the Context of Patriarchy". Anthropological Linguistics, 54 (3) (Fall 2012), pp. 261-279.
Brendemoen, Bernt: “Prestige register vs. common speech in Ottoman Turkish”. In: High vs. Low and Mixed Varieties, edited by Gunvor Mejdell and Lutz Edzard. 123-132. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2012.

Optional:

Alvestad, Silje and Lutz Edzard. 2009. "The evidence of the living language: normative forms vs. spoken modern Hebrew". In: Alvestad, Silje and Lutz Edzard. Sonority, Optimality and the Hebrew p"ch Forms, pp. 163-201. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.

Topics in Literature Studies (all syllabus material available from Fronter)

(By Professor Stephan Guth)

Seminar 1 - Fact versus fiction. The “added value” of narrative, or: Why literature matters. The role of the writer in the MENA region.

Culler, Jonathan: Literary Theory: A very short introduction. Oxford Univ. Press, 2007. => ch. 2: “What is Literature and Does it Matter?”, pp. 18-41.
Abbott, H. Porter: “Narrative and Truth”. = Ch. 11 in id., The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative, 2nd ed., Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008, pp. 145-59.
Klemm, Verena: “Different Notions of Commitment (iltizām) and Committed Literature (al-adab al-multazim) in the Literary Circles of the Mashriq”. Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures, 3 (1) (2000), pp. 51-62.
Mehrez, Samia: “Introduction”. In: S.M., Egyptian Writers between History and Fiction, Cairo: AUC Press, 1994, pp. 1-16 and 147-48 (notes)

Seminar 2 - Literary history (overview), themes and genres in modern Arabic fiction

Guth, Stephan. 2013. “Novel, Modern Arabic”. In: Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd edition (online).
Guth, Stephan. 2011. “From Water-Carrying Camels to Modern Story-Tellers, or How “riwāya” Came to Mean ‘novel’: A History of an Encounter of Concepts.” In: Borders and Beyond: Crossings and Transitions in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. K. Eksell & S. Guth, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011: 147-79.

Optional:

Casini, Lorenzo. 2011. “The Nation, the Narrative Subject, and the European Theme in the Development of the Egyptian Novel”. In: From New Values to New Aesthetics: Turning Points in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. S. Guth & G. Ramsay, vol. I: From Modernism to the 1980s. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011: 59-70.
Hafez, Sabry. 1976. “The Egyptian Novel in the Sixties”. Journal of Arabic Literature, 7 (1976), pp. 68-84.
Guth, Stephan. 2011. “Literary Currents in Egypt since the Beginning/Mid-1960s”. In: From New Values to New Aesthetics: Turning Points in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. S. Guth & G. Ramsay, vol. 1: From Modernism to the 1980s, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011: 85-112.
Guth, Stephan.(2007 [2008]). “Individuality Lost, Fun Gained: Some Recurrent Motifs in Late Twentieth-Century Arabic and Turkish Novels”. Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies, 7 (2), pp. 25-49.

Seminar 3 - West reads East reads West: Orientalism/Occidentalism. Relation to the West in MAL

El-Enany, Rasheed. 2009. “Theme and Identity in Postcolonial Arabic Writing”. In: Chewing over the West: Occidental Narratives on Non-Western Readings, ed. Doris Jedamski, Amsterdam: Rodopi (CrossCultures; 119): 1-36.
Casini, Lorenzo. 2008. “Beyond Occidentalism: Europe and the Self in Present-Day Arabic Narrative Discourse”. EUI Working Papers RSCAS 2008/30.
Holmberg, Bo. 2006. “Adab and Arabic Literature”. In: Literary History: Towards a Global Perspective, vol. 1: Notions of Literature Across Cultures, ed. by A. Pettersson [et al.], Berlin [etc.]: de Gruyter, 2006: 181-205.
Rooke, Tetz. 2011. “The Emergence of the Arabic Bestseller: Arabic Fiction and World Literature”. In: From New Values to New Aesthetics: Turning Points in Modern Arabic Literature, ed. S. Guth & G. Ramsay, vol. II: Postmodernism and thereafter, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011: 201-13.
Allan, Michael. 2012. “How Adab Became Literary: Formalism, Orientalism and the Institutions of World Literature”. Journal of Arabic Literature, 43: 172-96.

Seminar 4 - Starter kit for the analysis of narrative texts

Culler, Jonathan. 1997. “Narrative” = ch. 6 in his Literary Theory: A very short introduction, Oxford UP 1997: 82-93.
Propp, Vladimir. 2008. Morphology of the Folktale. 19th paperback edition, Austin, TX : UT Press, 2008. => ch. 3: “The functions of Dramatis Personae” (pp. 25-65).
Herman, David (ed.). 2009. The Cambridge Companion to Narrative. 3rd ed., Cambridge UP. => ch. 3: H. Porter Abbott, “Story, plot, and narration”, pp. 39-51. / => ch. 7: M. Jahn, “Focalization”, pp. 94-108.
Guth, Stephan. Working sheet “How to analyze a piece of fiction”. (1p.)

Published May 10, 2017 1:29 PM - Last modified Sep. 27, 2017 3:34 PM

Syllabus/achievement requirements

Theory and project description

Seminar No. I (August 16th, at UiO): Introduction - What is Research?

Seminar No. II (August 21th, at UiO): What is Research? (cont.)

Seminar No. III (August 22th, at UiO): What is Research? (cont.)

Seminar No. IV (August 28-30that Granavolden): Debating Middle East Studies

Seminar No. V (August 28-30that Granavolden): Orientalism

Seminar No. VI (August 28-30that Granavolden): The Rentier State

Seminar No. VII (August 28-30th at Granavolden): Authoritarianism in the Middle East

Seminar No. VIII (August 28-30th at Granavolden): Why the Arab Uprisings?

Seminar No. IX (August 28-30th at Granavolden): Research Ethics