Midterm and Map Quizes

It feels good to be finnished with the midterm and honestly, although it was long and tim consuming, it did help bring together everything we have learned so far. Cleveland's book really helped me put my thoughts and ideas together and his chapters followed our lectures accordingly. I think that Cleveland and Peirce have some interesting opinions on the women of the harem and their roles. Cleveland covers Middle Eastern history from about the 14th century up until semi-present. He has alot of informative material in there, but only touches upon the women of the harem a little bit compared to other things. Leslie Peirce writes a whole book about the status of women of the harem and how significant they were to just forget about them. Sulayman the Magnificent and Shah Abbas were very similar when identifying them. Actually, they shared alot of the same interests such as, a strong military and wanting to expand their territorial powers. The Bastard of Istanbul question was an interesting one because in the interview with Elif Shafak that I listened to, she explains that one of the main underlying themes of the book is the role of memory. How people perceive things and what actually happened. I think that this theme does a good job in explaining why people have different views and opinions on the Armenian Genocide. The other thing I wanted to mention was the map quizes. I think that they do a good job of making someone familiar with the region and where key places are located. If you do them then you do understand the importance of location ( i.e located near the seas).