On May 14, 1948, a group of Zionist leaders declared the foundation of the State of Israel on the land most of the world had known—and in many cases, would continue to know—as Palestine, and which Jews had long known as the Land of Israel. One land, known by two names, had already been, for almost a century, the subject of ever intensifying political disagreements and historical debates. This class offers the tools for students to both understand and become historians by interweaving histories of Palestine, the Land of Israel, and the State of Israel; the Zionist and Palestinian nationalist movements; and the intersections of this multifaceted place with the larger Middle East, Europe, and America. We proceed chronologically, weaving together political history (the history of political leaders and decisions), intellectual history (the history of ideas), and cultural and social history (the history of the way that ordinary people lived and understood their lives).
Students will, over the course of the quarter, work to achieve the following learning objectives:
- Become familiar with the major events, turning points, places, and personalities that shaped Palestine/Israel both in the years preceding Israeli statehood/the Palestinian Nakba and in the years since.
- Be able to describe how regional and international trends, ideas, actors, and politics affected, directed, or limited local and international choices of both Jews and Palestinian Arabs in different periods
- Understand ways in which Jewish and Arab politics within and beyond Palestine/Israel were internally complicated and describe major ideological, social, ethnic, and class divisions within the Jewish and Zionist community and the Palestinian Arab community.
- Become comfortable reading and analyzing historical primary sources by identifying the point of view of the writer, finding key phrases or points that indicate the focus of the argument, and connecting individual opinions with broader historical developments and historiographic trends.
- Describe accurately how reputable historians, through their choices of focal points, sources, scholarly methodologies, and research questions, can come to radically different readings and interpretations of history while nonetheless agreeing on a basic narrative of events.
- Critique and evaluate AI-generated content about Israel/Palestine in light of scholarly research.