Bryn Mawr College

Deborah Harrold

Deborah Harrold has broad interests in political science. Her general area of specialization is comparative politics of the Middle East and North Africa but both her education at the University of Chicago and her field work in Algeria in the early 1990s have led her to emphasize interconnections between fields. For example, international issues, great power politics, political economy and issues of globalization are enormously important for an understanding of the Middle East and North Africa.In her research and in her courses, she draws from different fields and intellectual traditions, and encourages students to think comparatively and historically. She also enjoys teaching basic political science courses that use canonical texts and contemporary social science to engage today’s political issues.

Courses for the 2008-2009 Academic Year
Fall

College Seminar: Islam, Politics, Modernity. 
A writing-intensive course for freshmen.

POLSB 131 - Introduction to Comparative Politics.  The emergence of new nationalisms after the fall of the Soviet Union and the expansion of democracy were great surprises to social scientists.  Where do these things come from?  What are their roots and causes?  An introduction to the questions and methods of comparative politics.

POLSB 248 - Modern Middle East Cities: Spaces of politics, places of identity.  Cities of Islamic history, cities of a globalized economy, cities created by oil, cities of modernist social visions and planning; this course looks at a variety of Middle East and North African cities.  It is particularly concerned with the negotiation of state control, urban planning and its alterations in urban practices, social movements and new spaces of politics, competing architectural visions, globalizations, and new local identities. 

 Spring

POLSB 101 Large questions in political science; an introduction to political science.
While political science is a relatively new discipline, many of its questions are much older.  This course introduces students to political science through major questions, such as the reasons and causes of war, the search for the best form of government, the relationships between wealth and power, the origins of inequality, the reasons and results of rebellion, and the consequences of globalization for wealth and power.  Our basic text is Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic Democracy in America, combined with other works of theory and social science.

POLSB 282 - The Exotic Other:  Gender and sexuality in the Middle East. 
This course is concerned with the meanings of gender and sexuality in the Middle East and North Africa.  We give particular attention to the construction of tradition; and to the  performance, reinscription and transformation of the traditional. We are also concerned with the role of the West in the construction and commodification of Middle Eastern sexualities.