HST 397 - Women in the Middle East

Course unit(s): 1
Meets GAR: Meets general academic requirement DE and HU.
This course surveys the history of women in the Middle East from the advent of Islam in the seventh century to the present. We will investigate the role of women in Islam as a religion and examine the range of women’s experience in different periods and places in the Islamic Middle East. Topics may include the role of women in pre-Islamic Arabia, family law in Islam, the status of women in Islamic societies, Muslim women, and the effects of secularism, nationalism, socialism, and fundamentalism in the modern period.