Teaching about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA)

Session Submission Type: Wednesday Full Day Short Course

Session Description

Previous research and anecdotes demonstrate that students have a significant degree of preconceived notions about the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Research also demonstrate that these notions lower students’ ability to learn the course material and undermines the effectiveness of classroom instruction. Many political science courses, such as International Relations, Comparative Politics, American Foreign Policy, and Terrorism, now include some aspects of the MENA region making this a concern across sub-disciplines. Many instructors, however, lack the time and the resources to target these biases in their own courses. This proposed short course aims to train advanced graduate students and faculty (tenure track and non-tenure track) in a short course to be organized at APSA 2019. Participants will learn some common biases towards the region, develop strategies to target them, and receive ready-to-use lectures that they can directly use in their own courses.

OBJECTIVES: The proposed short course has the following objectives: The workshops
1) aim to identify and discuss common misunderstandings, misconceptions and biases concerning the MENA region;
2) provide a platform to discuss the best strategies to challenge them; and
3) provide ready-to use material including, maps, reading and documentary lists, and samples of online lectures for instructors to use in their own courses.

BENEFITS FOR THE PROFESSION: The proposed short course benefits the profession in the following ways: First, the project relates to teaching in general, one of the relatively neglected aspects of our profession—offering a critical perspective in areas that are contested by various perspectives. while instructors interact with students on a daily basis, they receive little to no training in addressing issues that may arise from the students’ pre-held beliefs. This project aims at initiating a discussion on how to teach highly sensitive topics and deal with students’ preconceived notions, particularly pertaining to MENA. Second, the project aims to provide professional development to advanced graduate students by providing practical knowledge and mentorship In general and the issues pertaining the middle east specifically. understanding the nature and implications of commonly held biases, in general, learn the best pedagogical practices in MENA-related ones, and receive certificates upon completion. Third, all participants will benefit from the workshop readings and teaching guidance material, the most significant of which will be ready-to use slides that specifically target the preconceived notions identified in recent research. Participants could assign these slides “as is” as part of their course material for students to review them before MENA related topics are covered. That way, the instructors will not have to spend extra time to target these biases, a practice that requires time and expertise. Instructors could also modify them depending on their needs.

ABOUT THE PROJECT LEADERS:

Gamze Çavdar is a comparativist teaching both undergraduate and graduate courses since 2000. She regularly teaches general comparative politics courses as well as MENA related courses. Her research involves Islamist movements, gender, social policy and the politics of food. Çavdar has conducted a number of research on teaching; more recently, she has completed a study on student biases towards MENA (Çavdar et al. forthcoming). She is one of the Co-PIs of Bimson Seminar in 2018, a seminar that aimed to bring K-12 teachers and the faculty of College of Liberal Arts at Colorado State University together to study the topics related to humanistic learning. This year’s seminar aimed to train K-12 teachers about the biases students hold against the MENA region and took place at CSU campus in June 18th through 23rd, 2018.

Sultan Tepe specializes in comparative and urban politics. She teaches a range of courses from the required Research Design seminar to the Politics of Middle East at all levels. Her advising and research have been recognized by the 2014 UIC Graduate Mentoring excellence award and the 2017 APSA best research paper and the 2018 APSA Most distinguished reviewer awards.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Çavdar, Gamze, Yavuz Yaşar and Jonathan Fisk. Forthcoming. “Student Biases about the Middle
East: Lessons from an Experiment,” Journal of Political Science Education.

Sub Unit

• APSA Panels and All Meetings and Receptions

Chair

• Gamze Cavdar Colorado State University

Presenter

• Sultan Tepe University of Illinois at Chicago