ISLM30018: Diplomacy: Engaging the Muslim World

1,000 word review article due in week 4 (30%)
1,500 word group project due in week 10 (35%)
1,500 word research essay due after SWOTVAC (35%)

Just a general note - In 2019 and 2020, this subject was known as 'Crisis Zone: Age of Uprisings', and before that it was 'Crisis Zone: Islam and Resistance'. As you can probably guess, it has gone through some changes in content as well.

Topics covered included
- The War on Terror
- The Arab Spring (Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Syria)
- The Islamic State
- General Turkish and Iranian history and politics
- Themes including youth, women + gender history, and media.

This is not like any other arts subject I've taken before in regards to assessments. In most other arts subjects (not including the non standard ones like languages/economics/psychology), a "research essay" would have to be at the very least 2,000 words. In 3rd year they're usually 2,500 words. And even then, it's never enough to cover the breadth and depth of whatever issue or topic the research essay is discussing. So you can guess my disbelief when I found out that the assessments in this subject are 1,500 words max. For a third-year subject which covers such complex and hotly debated issues, I found this to be incredibly strange. And perhaps because of this, I struggled with the assessments as I found myself constantly exceeding the word limit, and clearly I had rather poor judgement of what sections to cut and what to keep.

Overall though, it was a very decent subject and the content covered is both relevant and useful. I think the nature of the short assessments makes the subject a lot more accessible for non-arts students who may not be as comfortable with writing essays, and there was certainly a lot of students in my tutorial who were doing it as breadth. Overall, it was an interesting subject. As a politics student who has always wanted to do an Islamic studies subject, who also had no space for electives left on his study plan, this subject ended up being perfect as it also counted towards the Politics and International Relations discipline.
I should mention in regards to the short assignment though - this is purely based on the preferences of the subject coordinator. I know in previous years the research essay was 2,500 words. So I can't guarantee this information will be accurate for future students.

Yes, with screen capture

Matthew Nelson

N/A.

3.5 out of 5

N/A

1 x 1.5 hr lecture and 1 x 1 hr tutorial per week

2021 Semester 1

H2A (77)