How do those who live in “the Middle East” relate to their past(s), and what discourses do they draw on to represent and authorize it today?  How is “the past” recovered, commemorated, embodied, erased, marketed and consumed in the modern Middle East? This course focuses on various thematics of history, heritage, and memory practices: national commemorations and contested sites and events; embodied and gendered memories; invented traditions and structural nostalgia; the problems of writing oral histories; the politics of archaeology; museums and exhibitions; and the construction (and destruction) of tangible, intangible, and world heritage. This course includes a class trip to Turkey.