Teaching Islamic History in Trump Country

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: The Urgency of the Past: Teaching History to Respond to the Politics of the Present

Abstract

Objectives: This paper seeks to provide one case study of how teaching Islamic and Middle Eastern history and studies to undergraduates in the wake of the presidential campaign, elections and their result both forced and inspired different techniques, syllabi and subject matter. It considers changing political contexts and issues of relevancy. The paper asks, how do we adapt course design to different political climates, particularly when the subject matter is controversial?

Perspectives: This paper is narrowly focused on one teacher and practitioner’s experiences and methods. However, it raises broader questions regarding the role of political context in teaching, on the levels of academic climate, local and national politics.

Methods: This paper employs a qualitative approach, using autoethnography and personal narrative.

Evidence:The evidence from this paper is based on personal observations of the author’s experiences teaching Islamic and Middle Eastern history, as well as Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in a small college, in a small city in South Carolina during the 2016/2017 academic year. It carefully traces particular assignments, course readings and student reactions to these assignments, situating each in the changing political context of the presidential election. The media environment, both locally and nationally, included rising Islamophobia as well as challenges to historians’ authority, as the value of academic expertise was constantly questioned. For example, teaching Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety: the Islamist Revival and the Feminist Subject required reconceiving the book’s argument altogether, as it takes for granted a liberal, secular audience, seeking to destabilize feminist assumptions regarding women’s agency in a feminine context. Many students at the college were neither liberal nor secular, requiring adaptations in discussion activities and syllabi to push students towards an understanding of secularism rather than piety.. The questions students asked, how they understood the reading was in fact much closer to the subjects of Politics of Piety, women involved in 20th century Islamist revival movements in Egypt, than the book’s presumed readers.

Conclusion/Warrants: Teaching in a political context suffused by anti-Muslim, and to a much lesser degree anti-academic rhetoric forced adaptations in course design, but also offered opportunities to push students towards a broader understanding of the ways they related to the subject matter. Various assignments which addressed these issues clearly reflect and seek to build from the political climate.

Significance: Although this paper constitutes one example of adaptations in teaching materials and methods, it offers a perspective on how educators’ decisions reflect shifting political environments. It also points to broader issues of academic authority.

Author

• Hilary Kalisman, Furman University