Syllabus

Short Course Description

This seminar explores key issues in Shi?ism in regional and global politics, and introduces students to the development of central theological tenets, beliefs, and practices until and throughout the modern period. Shi?i politics is not reducible to theology or geopolitics; it emerges from the interaction of intellectual traditions, historical experience, institutions, culture, social structures, and political and economic circumstances. This seminar examines Shi?ism as a diverse and historically changing tradition as it parses issues such as the relationship between political and clerical authority, states and empires, modernity, and transnational networks. It will grapple with recurring questions: What is Shi?ism?as theology, community, political identity, scholarly tradition, or network? How do we reconstruct Shi?i history from contested sources? When and how did Shi?ism become political, and how useful is the distinction between quietism and activism? How should we study sectarianism and sectarianization and the role of states and empires in producing sectarian identity? How should we understand contemporary ?Shi?i geopolitics? in relation to religious solidarity, Iranian power, and local politics? And how has Shi?ism responded to modern knowledge systems, including science, nationalism, secularism, technology, and the university? Through the perusal of primary sources and secondary literature, the seminar examines events and historical processes that have shaped Shi?i communities and their politics in the region and at the international level.