Since the end of World War II, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S has exerted a tremendous impact on the many of the societies of the contemporary Middle East. Indeed, some challenges the world faces today, including global refugee crises, ethnic and religious conflict, authoritarian governments, militarization and arms races, famine and poverty, climate change, and underdevelopment, can be traced to policies and actions pursued in the Middle East by the U.S. government and its allies.

Despite this, Americans are by large under informed about, and sometimes uninterested in, the impact of the U.S. on the lives of people in the Middle East. For instance, most Americans would not necessarily recognize themselves as deeply connected to that part world despite the myriad of ways in which they are.

These assignments are intended to challenge you to critically reflect on the impact of country in which you live upon the Middle East and your own individual relationship with that region. They will also challenge you to critically reflect on how the knowledge you take from this class bears significance to your life outside the classroom. Most importantly, these assignments aim to help you think about how and why critical reflection of this type is, in and of itself, vital to the formation and maintenance of a vibrant culture of democratic debate. The connections and links these assignments ask you think about might not be clear to you at the first, but the point of the assignment is for you to forge them.