Who’s Afraid of Teaching the Middle East? Integrating Islamic Exegesis, Politics, Literatures, Arts, and Pop Culture in the Classroom

Led by Dr. Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon, Assistant Professor of Islamic, Maghrebian, and Francophone Studies, at UAB Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures.

The objective of this workshop is to facilitate the teaching of the Middle East at the high school and undergraduate college level.

Textbooks and courses about the Middle East in the U.S. have generally presented Islam as a set of monolithic practices and beliefs with little attention to the diversity within and without Islamic/Middle Eastern traditions. Against this scriptural framework through which the Middle East is understood and interpreted in American academia (Islam and Secularism; Islam and Modernity; Women and Gender in Islam; Human Rights in Islam; Slavery in Islam; Sexuality in Islam; gender roles in Islam, etc), this workshop calls for the use of new interpretive strategies and proposes the adoption of alternative classroom materials which encompass the complexity of the Middle East such as political cartoons, commercials, legalistic literature, poetry, classical & pop Arabic music, calligraphy, paintings, TV shows, etc. Dr. Lamia Ben Youssef Zayzafoon is author of The Production of the Muslim Woman: Negotiating Text, History and Ideology (Lexington Press, 2005).

Session Topics:

1. The Rise of Islam: In Text and Context
2. Orientalism in the Classroom: The Legacies of Renan and Gobineau
3. Civil Society and the Nation State: The Cases of Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Syria
4. Integrating Middle Eastern Music in the Classroom
5. The Arts of Islam: Origin, Evolution and Future

Apply for this workshop

Location: Birmingham, Alabama Humanities Foundation
Date: Monday, June 16, 2008
Times: Program runs 8:30am to 4:30pm
Format: One-day workshop. Lunch provided.
CEUs: 8 hours

Session topics, program activities and materials are tentative and subject to change.

For all questions concerning this program, contact
Thomas E. Bryant: tbryant@ahf.net 205-558-3997