Admission requirements
This course is open to students of the MA Middle Eastern Studies (research) or antoher relevant research MA.
Students from other programmes are kindly referred to the course description of the regular MA course.
Description
From the late 15th century onwards, European states imposed their power across the globe. In the Americas, Oceania, and much of Africa they did so through a process of settlement, developing European societies in their colonies, which ruled over, displaced, and dispossessed Indigenous populations. From the 19th century onwards, the lands of the Ottoman Empire became the target of similar colonial endeavours. This course will explore the academic debates surrounding the concept of settler colonialism, as well as the different political, historical, and geographic contexts in which it took hold. It will then zoom in on the MENA region in general, and French North Africa and Palestine more specifically. In doing so, the course will also reflect on how settler colonialism intersects with other social, economic, and political realities such as exploitation, dispossession, extraction of natural resources, racialisation, and the reconfiguration of gender relations.
Course objectives
Familiarise oneself with the concept of settler colonialism, as a specific form of colonisation.
Understand settler colonial studies as a field of study, and its interactions with others such as Indigenous studies.
Identify the connections between settler colonialism, franchise colonialism, and the global transition to capitalism.
Examine the relationship between settler colonialism and other social, economic, and political processes such as exploitation, dispossession, extraction of natural resources, racialisation, and the reconfiguration of gender relations.
Critically identify and assess the ways in which settler colonialism is relevant in the study of the Middle East and North Africa.
Engage with different approaches to settler colonialism, as well as with competing understandings of the colonial regimes in the MENA region.
Articulate how the conflicts between settler populations and Indigenous peoples on the one hand, and the colonial metropole on the other, structure the political and economic life of the colony.
Analyse the ways in which land and labour interact in shaping the specific social, economic, and political regimes in the different locales under consideration.
Timetable
The timetables are available through My Timetable.
The deadline(s) in MyTimetable is/are set for administrative purposes only. The actual date(s) will be communicated by the course convener(s) in Brightspace.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Attendance is compulsory for all sessions. Students must prepare well and contribute to in-class discussion. If a student cannot attend because of illness or misadventure, they should promptly inform the convener. Extra assignments may be set to make up for missed class time, at the convener’s discretion. Absence without notification may result in lower grades or exclusion from assessment components and a failing grade for the course.
Assessment method
Academic integrity
Students should familiarize themselves with the notion of academic integrity and the ways in which this plays out in their own work. A good place to start is this page. Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Students may not substantially reuse texts they have previously submitted in this or other courses. Minor overlap with previous work is allowed as long as it is duly noted in citation.
Students must submit their assignment(s) to Brightspace through Turnitin, so they can be checked for plagiarism. Submission via email is not accepted.
ChatGPT: What is possible and what is allowed? Dos and Don'ts.
Assessment and weighing
| Partial assessment | weighing |
|---|---|
| Engagement | 10% |
| Presentatio | 30% |
| Paper: | 60% |
- Engagement: Students are expected to attend and participate in course discussions. Since this is a seminar, thoughtful engagement is central to the course’s success. Students are therefore required to complete all readings in advance as well as attend all seminars. Marks are not awarded for filling a chair. Students are also expected to submit two questions on the Discussion Board on Brightspace the night before the seminar.
- Presentation: Each student will deliver a presentation during the seminar on the topic of the week. Signing up to these presentations will be discussed in week 1 of the course. Students will develop an argument based on the readings from the week, and conduct external research to find a case study (this can be a pattern, an isolated incident, or country experience) to use as evidence for their argument. (The presentation is not an opportunity to summarise or discuss all the points of all the readings. Everyone is expected to have read the readings). Students will circulate an abstract (250-500 words) of the presentation at least two full days prior to the class by uploading it to Brightspace. Students will be graded on presentation delivery, content, originality, depth of analysis, clarity of argument, ability to hold attention and stimulate discussion.
- Final Paper: Students will choose from among the thematic topics covered in the course and develop an original research paper on a question related to that theme. All paper topics must be approved by the professor. The paper should be 3000 words in length, contain a clear introduction, argument, and sufficient evidence to support the argument. This is a research paper and therefore requires time, research, and extensive peer-reviewed sources. Papers should be clear and succinct, with an unambiguous thesis on the first page. Paper should be submitted on Brightspace by their due date. Late papers will suffer a penalty each day, and will not be accepted more than 4 days after the due date, including weekends.
Final marks are formed by the weighted average.
In order to pass a course, students must obtain an overall mark of 5.50 (=6) or higher.
Each course is an integrated whole. All assessment parts must be completed in the same academic year. No partial marks can be carried over into following years.
Resit
A new version of the final assignment may only be written if the overall mark for the course is “5.49” or lower, and if the final paper was submitted on time. The deadline for this version will be determined in consultation.
Inspection and feedback
If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Required Readings:
Articles and book chapters can be found in the library, on the online library catalogue, or on the course Brightspace page. All students must arrive in class having thoughtfully read through the required readings.
If students wish to engage with relevant material in advance, the following books offer useful introductions to different approaches to the subject material:
Jody A. Byrd, (2011), The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, (2014), An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Boston: Beacon Press.
Mahmood Mamdani (2020), Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities, Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Robert Nichols (2020), Theft is Property! Dispossession and Critical Theory, Durham: Duke University Press.
Patrick Wolfe (2016), Traces of History: Elementary Structures of Race, London: Verso.
For the Research MA students additional reading will be determined by the convener at a later stage taking into account the students’ fields of interest. Extra sessions will be organized to discuss this extra literature.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
General information about course and exam enrolment is available on the website.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the information bar on the right
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office Herta Mohr