Wikipedia:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/Refugees in the Arab World (Rochelle Davis)

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Course description[edit]

This course will focus on displaced peoples and refugees in the Arab World, using three areas as case studies: Sudan, Palestine, and Iraq, and additional material on the Western Sahara. By focusing on long-term, qualitative studies, the course is designed to encourage us to re-think how we conceive of displaced people within academic, development, and policy perspectives. We will address issues concerned with citizenship, borders, rights, law, and history, with the intent to include all of these into our perspectives on how we understand displaced people, talk about them, advocate for them, develop policies around them, and manage them.

One of the main questions we will be asking throughout this class is how do we take a more holistic perspective (for lack of a better word) that takes into consideration history, culture, agency, respect, security, power relations, borders, etc., into our work in analysis, policy, and/or advocacy? And how do we do that without reifying “culture” or “tradition” or without empowering certain elements of society at the expense of others or of reducing situations to one explanatory factor (such as ethnicity, or religion, or politics, or environment)? Some of the other questions we’ll be dealing with include the following: What are the roles of governments in dealing with displaced persons? What are the roles of assistance and aid organizations? What are the roles of the displaced people themselves? For each of the geographical areas we will ask how do we generate knowledge about displaced people—what kinds of information do we produce—and to what ends is it used?

Assignment overview[edit]

There will be two different Wikipedia assignments during the semester: an individual assignment related to US policy towards refugees and collaborate efforts to improve the articles on Iraqi, Sudanese, Palestinian, and Western Saharan refugees.

Assignment Timeline[edit]

As of March 17, 2011:


Article projects (Iraq)


  • [http:/wiki/Palestinians_in_Iraq Palestinians in Iraq] (redirect from [http:/wiki/Palestinian_refugees_in_Iraq Palestinian refugees in Iraq]) -- needs more material
Status: AT done but not posted. In sandbox.



Status: MM posted.



Status: PY working on it.



Status: TF working on it.



Status: MFG working on it.


  • NEW ARTICLE: Internally Displaced Persons (IDPS in Iraq)
Status: DB & AB working on it
  • One More topic to be chosen by AS
==Students==

This is a list of the students in your class (or rather their Wikipedia usernames), along with their Wikipedia articles (which students will select at the appropriate time).

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