This course examines Islamic political thought from the origins of Islam to the present. It considers how Muslim thinkers over the past 14 centuries have understood such fundamental political concepts as the state, leadership, and law. The seminar also includes modern Muslim reflections on political concepts of Western origin, such as democracy, nationalism, and civil society.

This course aims to provide historical, empirical and theoretical foundation in order to help students comprehend and question complex dynamics of regional politics in the Middle East. The relations among major regional powers as well as their relations with global powers will be examined.

How do multinational corporations, interest groups, NGOs, and social movements engage in world politics? In exploring this question, this course provides an introduction to the study of transnationally operating non-state actors and transnational social movements. First, we will look at the influence of movements on inter-state relations and on inter-national organizations. Second, we will investigate their increasing involvement in global governance.

An intensive examination of the international politics surrounding disputes over the ownership, extraction, and vital natural resources including fresh water, petroleum, arable land, timber, minerals, and oceanic fisheries. The course will assess the growing pressures being brought to bear on the world's resource base, including population growth, globalization, unsustainable consumption, and climate change.

Introduction to the cultures and politics of the Middle East. Includes the situation of the region at the time of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire; the emergence of independent states before and after World War II; the rise of Arab and Zionist nationalism; the Arab-Israeli conflicts; and the superpower rivalry and its influence on regional politics. Other topics include the Iranian revolution, the domestic and regional role of Islamic movements, and the political economy of oil.

This course will examine the cultural, social, political, and economic history of African Americans through the Civil War. Topics covered include the African background to the African American experience, the Atlantic slave trade, introduction and development of slavery, master-slave relationships, the establishment of black communities, slave revolts, the political economy of slavery, women in slavery, the experiences of free blacks, the crisis of the nineteenth century, and the effect of the Civil War.

This course pushes beyond cliches and simplistic images about Germans, into the world-shaping and humanity-stretching German past. Beginning with the Napoleonic Wars and the emergence of German nationalism, students will follow developments up to the present--using primary sources that range from sublime to depraved and that concern politics, literature, music, and more. Themes include the roots of Nazism and of German democracy and the responsibility of individuals for social outcomes.

This course is an introduction to the expansion, consolidation, and eventual disintegration of the modern British Empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine this history with an eye to understanding the causes of empire, and its effects. Themes include formal and informal imperialism, the emergence of anti-colonial nationalism, the roles of gender and culture, and the legacies of British colonialism.