DB5041

Midterm Exam Assignment Instructions

Overview

Both questions below emphasize different aspects of American interest and involvement in the Middle East before the Civil War. The first focuses on faith and fantasy, often a blurry line when these overlap with politics or foreign policy. Be sure to capture the diverse theological roots of American Christian interest and influence in the region and those movements of a secular nature that are related. In this vein, American popular culture and literature came to mirror some of the false beliefs, romantic ideas, and other prejudices that formed at least some of the first impressions Americans had of the Middle East and its peoples. Can you identify some of these impressions?

The second question focuses on geopolitical interests that more directly reflect the strategic and commercial interests that would become the staple motive of most Middle East involvement up to the present. This is your opportunity to identify some of these activities. Yet even here faith was never absent a mixed motive for doing business with the region, and in this period commercial relationships developed in tandem with missionary interests to produce not just Bibles and evangelism but institutional contributions as well. Can you discuss what some of these institutional contributions were and why they happened as readily as they did?

Instructions

· Length: 8 double spaced pages total for both questions (no title page necessary). You may write more pages if necessary

· Format: Turabian

· Citations: At least 7 sources must be used and may include the course text, Bible, and scholarly articles. You need not use other sources than the text but may if necessary or desirable and should cite page numbers of the text if necessary. The exam is open-book/open-note/open-research and focuses on the assigned readings, the Discussion topics, and other research related to the course content.

· Answer the following 2 questions below separately, yet in a single Word document.

Essay Questions [Answer both]:

1. Briefly explain the role that faith played in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East prior to the Civil War, including the religious ideas and movements that informed USFP during this period. Staying with Oren’s template of power, faith, and fantasy, can you distinguish which American views expressed faith, and which fantasy?

2. Identify and explain primary U.S. geopolitical interests in the Middle East prior to 1900, even if those interests happened on occasion to overlap with religious motives and interests. Among other counter-intuitive developments, can you identify what Oren considers the positive humanitarian consequences of American failure to successfully evangelize most local Jews, Eastern Christians, and Muslims?

Note: Your assignment will be checked for originality via the Turnitin plagiarism tool.