POLM081 - International Relations of the Middle East - 2023/24

This module aims to provide students with the opportunity to study the Middle East from within the discipline of International Relations (IR). As such, students will take the analytical tools of IR and apply them to the region. In so doing, postgraduate students will be asked to familiarize themselves with these tools but also to question their applicability beyond the global North. The result will be a greater understanding, not only of the international relations of the Middle East, but also of the wider non-western world. This understanding will be based on seeing the states of the region as vulnerable to external intervention, to sub-state movements of ethnicity and sect as well as supra-state identities based around the Arab nation. Students will examine the recent history of the Middle East and the contemporary relations between the region itself and the wider international system.