Instructor: Rosie Bsheer
This course is a critical history of political economy that centers on the Middle East and South Asia. It begins with readings in classical political economy, liberalism, and Enlightenment thought, coupled with colonial, postcolonial, and feminist critiques of these readings. It does so in order to critically trace the development of the field of economics and how it has shaped everyday political, social, material, and environmental life around the world since the 1750s. The course introduces major topics and debates in twentieth-century political economy, paying special attention to questions of private property, the making and naturalizing of the modern economy, and the relationship between capitalism and the environment, imperialism, Islamism, financialization, and development economics.