This course took an in-depth look at the history, dating back to the late 19th century, of the Israel-Palestine conflict and its eruption into the 21st century conflict we see today. The conflict was analyzed through various lenses in order to compile an objective, holistic understanding of the conflict’s initiation and perpetuation. As such, at the most fundamental level, the course broke down the roots of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism and the growth of these movements both ideologically and materially in terms of land acquisition. On more broad scales, the class explored the ways in which both the regional Arab countries as well as the international community (most significantly Britain, France, and the US) played roles in instigating, supporting, and opposing different sides of the conflict. My time in the class not only educated me on a topic I was quite uninformed about, but it also inspired me to restart the chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Pittsburgh and pushed me to stay engaged with key global issues, especially those in which the US directly plays a role in.

This course focused on US intervention in the Middle Eastern North African region in the 20th and 21st centuries. The US role in various conflicts including Palestine-Israel, the Suez Canal Crisis in Egypt, the Gulf Wars, the Iraq War, and the Syrian Civil War were all analyzed and discussed in detail. Furthermore, US relations, strategic partnerships, and allies in the Middle East were discussed in the context of US foreign policy and influence in US engagement or instigation of Middle East crises. Overall, this course shed significant light on the negative effects US and Western imperialism have perpetuated in the MENA region and the resulting consequences for the this region.

This discussion based course took a look at the various troubling occurrences of mass violence across the world in the 20th century. Most notably, the course analyzed the period of the Holocaust in order to contextualize how such a horrific crime could have been carried out in its era and to understand the role of Holocaust memory within Germany, Europe, and across the world. Furthermore, this course attempted to make sense of the Holocaust’s deemed significance over other mass violence acts, such as the Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, in order to understand the perception of mass violence across populations, and the effects that historical research, media, and other factors play in the processes of healing and memorialization of these crimes.

This course provided me with the framework to analyze various countries in the Middle Eastern North African (MENA) region and how the historical development of their political and governmental systems have established their modern-day social, political, and economical dynamics. Much like the other courses I have taken for the Global Studies certificate, this course took an in-depth look at the role of Western imperialism and foreign influence in shaping everything from the political systems and people in power within the region to the established borders of the modern MENA region.  As such, I was able to develop a greater, more holistic understanding of how the MENA region came to be the entity it is today as well as some of the historical pretext that is in-part responsible for the conflicts we see in the 21st century such as the Iraq war and the currently ensuing civil wars in Syria and Yemen.

Within the course, I was challenged to combine global, regional, and state-specific influences in attempting to understand the path MENA countries took to become their modern nation-state entities. More specifically, the notion of “nation-states” and what this means for Arab identities was a big challenge for me to grasp. I was raised to view myself as Syrian–separate from being Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, Iraqi, Egyptian, etc., and also connected to these nationalities through a common Arab identity. However, such conceptions of these identities is a relatively new, Western concept introduced to the MENA region in the 20th century. Beforehand, much of the Levant region (modern day Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan) was encompassed under the identity of Greater Syria; thus, what exactly it means to be “Syrian” or “Lebanese” or “Iraqi” is quite nuanced and in large part a result of the Westernization of the MENA region.

This course provided me with an overview of established dictatorships in every region across the world, enhancing my ability to use my studies of globalization to really understand how issues that may seem to be on a state or regional scale actually are a part of a larger global context. This course developed an understanding of specific dictatorships with a focus on the effects of Western imperialism and Westernization in the rise and fall of these dictatorships. Being that I chose to focus my Global Studies certificate on Peace, Conflict, & Security in the Middle East, I was able to gear my final presentation and paper for the course on a dictatorship in the Middle East–that of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt during the 1950s-1960s. In this way, I was able to implement the concepts, methods, and theories I learned within the course to a specific case within my region of interest. This project allowed me to enhance my understanding of the MENA region and how to better analyze and make sense of the rise and fall of various leaders within the region.