The question I've settled on for now is "The Iranian hostage crisis- The origins of Islam as a synecdoche for the Middle East." Wording of this question has been one of my biggest hurdles but i feel quite confident in the broader meaning and the areas this phrasing will allow me to explore.
If anyone's interested i'll post my current draft as I am quite proud of my chosen topic and it's associated areas.
I'm going to be completely honest but two things jump out at me:
That is not actually a question.
The phrase "The Iranian hostage crisis - The origins of Islam as a synecdoche for the Middle East" seems meaningless and possibly contradictory without further clarification or context. The Iranian Hostage Crisis was 1979-1981, the origin of Islam was c.600 depending on when you count these things. So I'm not really clear on what your dissertation is even about just looking at the title.
Agreed with /u/AncientHistory. Also if you could possibly explain what the synecdoche is here? I'm familiar with (and occasionally guilty of) the problem of the identification and conflation of Middle East with Muslim World, but I'm not sure if that's what you have in mind or what the connection to the Iranian hostage crisis might be.
Not only is that not a question, it's a very confusing statement that doesn't actually one an idea of what the topic of the dissertation is. As /u/AncientHistory said, the Iranian Hostage Crisis was 4 November 1979 – 20 January 1981 while the origins of Islam are in the early 7th century.
Furthermore, how are the origins of Islam a synecdoche for the Middle East? A synecdoche is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that refers to a part of something is substituted to stand in for the whole, an example of a synecdoche would be 'boots on the ground' where the boots are referring to the boots on the feet of soldiers. How can the origins of Islam (a reference to historical events and theological concepts) be a synecdoche for the Middle East (a geographical and cultural region)?
As others have said, there's some problems with word choice in your question (title?). And as /u/CptBuck mentioned, there's some problems with what I assume you will be your arguments. From the statement you've given it seems that you will argue (and correct me if I'm wrong) that the Iranian hostage crisis was the origin point from which some group of people--probably the Western world, or a subset of it--came to equate the Middle East with Islam, or more particularly radical Islam.
If this is in fact what you plan on arguing, I caution you against doing so for two reasons. First, the Western tendency to view the Middle East solely through the lens of Islam extends back centuries (Check out, for instance, Christopher Lyons' Islam Through Western Eyes.) In the context of US-Middle East relations, Robert Allison's The Crescent Obscured has shown how the conflation of Islam and the Middle East was a prominent belief even during Americans' first encounters with the Middle Eastern world in the late 18th century.
Second, the argument that the Western response to the Iranian hostage crisis was both shaped by and helped perpetuate a conflation of Islam and the Middle East is not a new one. There are many scholars who have made such an argument, among them Edward Said in his book Covering Islam.
Not to put a damper on your dissertation question/topic/argument, but I think it could use some pretty significant revision. As others have said, the title is unclear, which makes it difficult to understand what it is you are actually discussing. Moreover, my assumptions about what you would likely be arguing make me wary mainly because the arguments are either historically inaccurate or commonplace.