Prof John Chalcraft

This course is available on the MSc in Gender (Rights and Human Rights), MSc in Political Science (Conflict Studies and Comparative Politics) and MSc in Political Science (Global Politics). This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is capped.

The course explores the role of popular politics in the making of the contemporary Middle East and North Africa. The primary focus is on the Arab world but reference is also made to Iran, Israel and Turkey. We study the origins, course and consequences of popular protest, social and political movements, uprisings and revolutions in the region. We ask how a wide variety of subaltern social groups have challenged subordination and brought about new social relations. Our cases are drawn from the early twentieth century to the present. Common topics include the Iranian revolution of 1979, everyday forms of resistance, the first intifada in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (1987-1991), social justice and labour movements, Islamic activism, the Arab uprisings of 2011 and the Rojava Revolution. The course draws on critical, historically-minded and Gramscian approaches, aims to grasp the role of active subjectivity and leadership in context, and evaluates the ways in which a wide variety of movements have aimed to bring about change, and how they have succeeded and/or failed to do so.

This course is delivered through a combination of seminars and lectures totalling a minimum of 30 hours in Autumn Term. Week 6 of the AT is a reading week.

In order to develop essay skills and obtain feedback outside of formal assessment, students will complete a 2,000 word formative essay on which they will receive feedback as to overall standard, argument, evidence, structure and style. Students will choose one essay from a list of titles. To prepare for the 5,000 word essay, students will submit for approval a proposed title and a two-page handout summarising the question or puzzle that their essay will address. A seminar will also be held as a workshop to assist students prior to the final submission of their 5,000 word essay.

Abrahamian, Ervand. Iran between Two Revolutions (Princeton University Press, 1982); Achcar, Gilbert. The People Want. (Saqi Books 2012); Bayat, Asef. Street Politics: Poor People's Movements in Iran (Columbia University Press, 1997); Chalcraft, John. Popular Politics in the Making of the Modern Middle East (Cambridge University Press, 2016); Cronin, Stephanie. Subalterns and Social Protest (Routledge, 2007); Kurzman, Charles. The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Harvard University Press, 2004); Swedenburg, Ted. Memories of Revolt: The 1936-1939 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003); Tripp, Charles, The Power and the People (Cambridge: CUP, 2013).

Essay (100%, 5000 words) in the WT.