- UCAS course code
- VL13
- UCAS institution code
- M20
Course unit details:
Minority Rights in Islamic World History
Unit code | HIST32392 |
---|---|
Credit rating | 20 |
Unit level | Level 3 |
Teaching period(s) | Semester 2 |
Available as a free choice unit? | No |
Overview
Aims
To gain extensive knowledge on key Islamic conceptions of difference and their relationship to the international history of minority rights.
To develop a nuanced and interconnected interpretations of key historiographical debates about Minority Rights and Islamic World History.
To equip students with tools to understand competing systems of managing religious and social differences across different imperial and national contexts.
To develop theoretical approaches for studying questions of religious and social difference in colonial and postcolonial contexts through the lenses of Islamic World History.
To encourage students to interrogate the entangled macro and micro processes that turned minority rights into a central category of governance and claim-making worldwide
Teaching and learning methods
Workshop activities: brief introductory “lectures” on a weekly subject and various seminar activities (e.g. discussions and presentations).
Assessments: 1 primary source analysis/book review and 1 essay
The students will be provided with the reading materials, but they will be encouraged them to use diverse e-learning tools and primary source databases of relevance to the topics in question.
Knowledge and understanding
Demonstrate a broad understanding of the role of Muslim thinkers and institutions in contesting and challenging eurocentric and colonial forms of world order.
Develop a nuanced understanding of key ideas, processes, and events in the international history of minority rights.
Gain critical insights on how religious and social difference are constructed and turned on their head by a verity of political alternatives.
Develop inter-disciplinary lens of historical analysis of minority rights in relation to major Islamic conceptions of difference alongside major ideologies of the modern period, such as Liberalism, Socialism, Gandhism etc.
Cultivate a critical understanding on the production of ideologies, their “translation” to state policies, and the responses to them.
Intellectual skills
Develop integrative and comparative skills to analyze complex ideas and their impact on diverse societies.
Refine argumentative skills and critical thinking through oral presentations, discussions, and academic writing.
Develop original arguments by synthesizing primary and secondary sources from diverse contexts.
Analyze primary sources from a wide-range of genres, including census’ proceedings, news articles, constitutions, memoirs etc.
Identify and interpret key historical debates by reading a wide-range of studies in intellectual, social, and political history, as well as in historical anthropology.
Practical skills
Develop teamwork skills through group presentations.
Learn how to use primary and secondary sources creatively and efficiently in both writing and in speaking.
Independent research skills throughout the seminars and written assignments Communicating complex ideas and arguments through presentations and in-class discussions
Time-management and organizational skills in both in-class conversations and written assignments
Transferable skills and personal qualities
Broad familiarity with the history of the Islamic world and minority rights and their effects on regional and international politics
Clear, evidence-based and argumentative writing
Ability to carry out independent research using both primary and secondary sources
Constructive participation in debates and discussions
Develop teamwork skills through a variety of group activities in workshops and group presentation
Employability skills
- Other
Assessment methods
Method | Weight |
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Other | 35% |
Written assignment (inc essay) | 65% |
Feedback methods
Recommended reading
Khalid Masud. Minorities in Islamic History: an Analytical Study of Four Documents.‖ Journal for Islamic Studies 20, (2000): 125-134.
Janet Klein, “Making Minorities in the Eurasian Borderlands: A Comparative Perspective from the Russian and Ottoman Empires,” in Empire and Belonging in the Eurasian Borderlands, eds. Kristina A. Goff and Lewis H. Siegelbaum (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019), 17-33.
SherAli Tareen, Perilous Intimacies: Debating Hindu-Muslim Friendship After Empire (Columbia University Press, forthcoming August 2023)
Mahmood Mamdani, Neither Settler Nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020)
Manan Ahmed Asif, A Book of Conquest: The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Thamarat al-Funun (1898), On the Dreyfus Affair” and Other News Items [introduction and translation: Tarek El-Ariss],” in The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda, ed. Tarek El-Ariss (New York: MLA, 2018).
Adeeb Khalid, Making Uzbekistan: Nation, Empire, and Revolution in the Early USSR (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015).
Emily Greble, Muslims and the Making of Modern Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021).
Study hours
Scheduled activity hours | |
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Seminars | 200 |