Reading Happiness and the Middle East
Wed 12-2 PM 2.2059
Is happiness a private feeling or a public demand — and who decides what counts as a happy life, a happy family, a happy nation? This seminar reads Sara Ahmed’s The Promise of Happiness across the semester as its core text, using her critique of happiness as a social and political technology to interrogate discourses of happiness, contentment, and national well-being in Middle Eastern contexts — from state happiness indices and ministries of happiness to gendered expectations, migration and melancholia, and youth movements’ claims to joy as resistance. Each session works through one strand of Ahmed’s argument and tests it against a regional case, building toward a final essay in which students apply and critique her framework on a Middle Eastern happiness discourse of their choosing. No prior background in affect theory is required.
Week 1 — 14 Oct — what is “happiness”?
Week 2 — 21 Oct — no meeting on campus // reading time
Week 3 — 28 Oct — why happiness, why now (Ahmed, Intro)
Week 4 — 4 Nov — no meeting on campus // reading time
Week 5 — 11 Nov — happy objects (Ahmed, Ch1)
Week 6 — 18 Nov — no meeting on campus // reading time
Week 7 — 25 Nov — feminist killjoys (Ahmed, Ch2)
Week 8 — 2Dec — no meeting on campus // readting time
Week 9 — 9 Dec — unhappy queers (Ahmed, Ch3)
Week 10 — 16 Dec — no meeting on campus // reading time
Week 11 — 6 Jan — melancholic migrants (Ahmed, Ch4)
Week 12 — 13 Jan — no meeting on campus // reading time
Week 13 — 20 Jan — happy futures (Ahmed, Ch5)
Week 14 — 27 Jan — happiness, ethics, possibility (Ahmed, conclusion)
Week 15 — 3 Feb — no meeting on campus // possibly oral exams for those who need it // essay writing time
Week 16 — 10 Feb — no meeting on campus // possibly oral exams for those who need it // essay writing time
If you study this course as part of Reading the Middle East: there is no examination for this module.
If you study this course as part of Histories and Societies OR Traditions of Texts (MA ISME): Suggest your final paper topic until 5 Jan; this is mandatory to take the examination of the module. Submit the paper of 5000 words as mark-down (!!!) via email (from your fu-berlin email address) until 12 Feb for the first deadline, or 26 Feb for the second deadline. The paper is graded, thus counts towards your final grade in ISME.
If you study this course as part of Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte (MA Arabistik): notify me until Jan 5 whether you want to take the oral examination with me. They would take place on 3 Feb at 12 PM and last for 20 minutes; it is designed as a scholarly discussion (it can be held in German). For the oral exam, you choose two topics from the course that you want to talk about and engage with (critically); you do not need to present them. I will choose a third topic that we will discuss briefly. I will not tell you the topic beforehand but if you engage with the materials and discussions during the course, you will have no issues in passing this exam. It is evaluated on a pass/fail basis, so it doesn’t count towards the final grade.