Middle Eastern Revolutions

I’m assigning two required readings for Tuesday, February 9 on Nasser’s Arab socialism. One of them is on the St. Edward’s Library website, so you’ll need to log in to view it. It’s located here.  The second is a reflection on the Arab Spring and the legacy of Nasser, located here. I’m also providing this optional reading for anyone who wants the challenge of reading advanced scholarship on authoritarianism and democratization in Nasser’s Egypt.

The big question I want us to answer through our discussions on Tuesday is: What lessons can we learn from Nasser’s Egypt that we can bring to the debate on democratization? Continue reading →

Here we are officially at the end of one month of class. Today we’re going to be talking about Egypt’s revolution. You read a pretty detailed chapter in BAS about contemporary Egypt. What I’d like to do today, after our visit from Prof. Rist to talk about studying abroad this summer, is to highlight some historical themes about Egypt. So, we’ll talk a bit about the things that you geo-tagged from this chapter, and then watch a music video that was circulating during the first days of the Tahrir uprising.  Continue reading →

Wow! We’re almost a month into the semester. This week we’ll start moving on to talking about Egypt and its revolution, which will occupy our readings and activities for about the next month.

Today, we’re going to get some practice understanding and applying perspectives on globalization, as well as preparing to being the reaction and reflection papers. Don’t worry: you only have two of these in each half of the semester and they’re pretty short and sweet.  Continue reading →

Our agenda for the day:

• Questions and comments about Diigo. (5 min.)
• Compare maps with neighbors (5 min.)
• Small group discussion questions about the chapter (15 min.)
• Whole-class discussion about the chapter, nature of political activism, first-person perspective on a major historical event (15 min).
• Shift to blogs. Look at assignment sheet and goals. (5 min.)
• Look at examples of previous semester blogs. (5 min.)
• Sign into your class blog with SEU and start customizing.

Continue reading →

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the Tahrir Uprising in Egypt, and it was met with a lot of forlorn remembrance but little public display. You can dig back through our Diigo feed to see a number of prominent Egyptian thinkers and activists reflecting on it. Continue reading →

Now that we’re about two weeks into the course, our routine is probably coming into focus. To help keep track of all the weekly tasks, I created Canvas assignments for the bookmarking activities, geo-tagging and the short papers.

Today we’re going to talk a bit about the conditions that generally led to the revolutions that started in Dec. 2010/Jan. 2011. After that, we need to do a bit of practice with geotagging and bookmarking, so I’ll have you “workshop” those activities in class where I can help.  Continue reading →

Greetings! We just passed this weekend the five-year anniversary of the collapse of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, and we’re fast approaching the five-year anniversary of the start of the Egyptian revolution.

Today we’ll have a few activities and discussions intended to help situate us in the pattern of work for the semester and highlight some of the fundamental concepts we’ll use to learn about the Middle Eastern revolutions this semester. Continue reading →

On Thursday we’ll talk about where and what the Middle East is and I’ll share some nifty little artifacts that help put the diversity of the Middle East into a bit sharper focus. Hopefully you’ve all read or are reading this article and adding comments to the class blog about the three or four things you find surprising or uncanny in the short reading.  Continue reading →

Today is our first day of class. I will typically write up blog posts like this before class to plan out the meeting or share materials we’ll use in discussion this day or the next today.

For our first day my plan is to introduce you to the course’s main purpose and goals, give you a knowledge pretest, do a group activity to define the term revolution, and finish with a look at our policies and assignment for Thursday.  Continue reading →