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Fall Semester 2007, Tues/Thurs 9:45-11:00 am
War in Irag; fighting between Shi'ite and Sunni; military coup d'etat in Turkey; Israel-Palestine conflict; the threat of war in Lebanon--these are some topics that appear everyday in the headlines from the Middle East.
This seminar will focus on the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Middle East. We will use Turkey as a focal point when looking at the development in the region since Turkey appears to be a laboratory for the salient political, social, and cultural processes of 20th and early 21st century in the Middle East, and in the developing world at large.
Professor Taner Akcam
100 Nolte Hall
612-624-2988
takcam@umn.edu
Fall 2007 course.
Study of the 1933-45 extermination of six million Jews and others by Nazi Germany on the basis of "race." European anti-Semitism, implications of Social Darwinism and Race Theory, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders,
resistance. Theological responses of Jews and Christians.
History 3727 W Section 001/Jewish Studies 3521/Religious Studies 352l
Dr. Stephen Feinstein, Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Hits 3727W Cross-listed as RelS 3521/JwSt 3521 sec 001
Time: 11:15-12:30PM TTh
Place: Nicholson Hall 155 (East Bank)
Fall 2007 course on Post-Holocaust France: Competition for Victimhood. In recent years, debates have erupted in France concerning the traumas endured by the parents and ancestors of French Muslims and other French nationals of African descent. A legacy of France's involvement in the Atlantic slave-trade and of the colonization of North and West Africa which ended with Algerian independence in 1962, French ethnic minorities are claiming official recognition and the status of victims of the French Republic.
In recent years, debates have erupted in France concerning the traumas endured by the parents and ancestors of French Muslims and other French nationals of African descent. A legacy of France's involvement in the Atlantic slave-trade and of the colonization of North and West Africa which ended with Algerian independence in 1962, French ethnic minorities are claiming official recognition and the status of victims of the French Republic. These debates have arguably taken as their starting point the Holocaust and the ensuing French guilt over collaboration with Nazi Germany--a collaboration which, after WWII, led to a politics of memory (devoir de memoire) and to material and symbolic compensations for victims. Writing in the 1990s, historian Jean-Michel Chaumont retraced the history of this competition of memories--of minorities' claims for recognition and identity--from the 1960s.
We will examine this process from the 1960s up to more recent political and academic debates. We will discuss controversies including the law concerning "positive aspects of colonization," the legal problems recently encountered by a historian of global slave-trade for exploring the extra-Atlantic trade, and the half-Antillean, half-Briton comedian Dieudonne's flirtation with extreme right-wing anti-Semitism--ostensibly motivated by his claim that the Jews have monopolized human suffering and therefore obliterated Black suffering.
Class Time: We will read essays, novels, legal documents and audiovisual texts in order to explore this phenomenon, which is quite possibly the most controversial topic in France today.
For more information, contact:
Bruno Chaouat
Associate Professor of French
Department of French and Italian
260 Folwell Hall
University of Minnesota
9 Pleasant St. SE
Minneapolis MN 55455
Tel: 612-626-0537
Fax: 612-624-6021
Fall 2007 course. In this seminar, we will read and discuss classic and recent texts on this broad and often divisive subject. To better assess the arguments presented in survey and theoretical papers, we will read original ethnographic materials, with each student choosing one subsistence society as the focus of their research efforts.
Warfare and Human Evolution
ANTH 4980, 3 credits
Tuesdays and Thursdays: 12:45-2:00 p.m.
Blegen Hall 145
Instructor: Professor Michael Wilson
For additional information, contact Michael Wilson at wilso198@umn.edu.