The course focuses directly on such issues as: religion, gender, modernity, socio-economic patterns, nationalism, social and national conflict, and the construction of social and cultural identities, in Israel, and in other test-case cultures in the Middle East. In addition to established research, it does so by examining cultural products such as literature, film, and music, as well as other primary texts such as manifestos and essays, produced by Israelis, and by other, test-case societies in the Middle East for comparative purposes.