Teaching about Islam in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, June 26-30, 2006

University of Pennsylvania
African Studies Center, Middle East Center,
South Asia Center, Center for East Asian Studies,
and the Univeristy Museum Education Department

2006 Summer Institute for Middle & High School Teachers

"Teaching about Islam in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East"
June 26-30, 2006

Final Program

Monday, June 26
Middle East: Teaching about Islam

Breakfast and Introduction: 9:00am – 10:00am

Kathy Spillman

Kathy Spillman is Associate Director of the Middle East Center at the University of Pennsylvania, and is responsible for developing and implementing programs, activities and outreach on Middle East issues and languages with faculty, students and the larger community. Prior to this, she was a Fulbright scholar in Prague, where she taught at Charles University and trained Czech NGOs. Kathy also worked as a civic educator and producer for a talk-show on C-SPAN in the 1990s, designing international education programs for high school teachers and students from around the country. She has also served as a consultant in NGO development and management in Macedonia, Ukraine and Armenia. She received her MA in international relations and Arabic from Georgetown University, and studied Arabic and comparative Arab politics in Tunisia, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

Morning session: 10:00am – 12:00noon

Area Studies

Ideas for Teaching about Islam and Muslim History, beyond the Thumbnail Sketch

Susan Douglas

Susan Douglas has an M.A. in Arab Studies from Georgetown University and a B.A. in History from the University of Rochester. She is an Affiliated Scholar and researcher with the Council on Islamic Education, working on textbooks, curriculum and standards, teacher workshops and resources. Major publications include teaching resources produced for the Council on Islamic Education, the National Center for History in the Schools, and online lessons for the IslamProject.org and the curriculum project World History for Us All. She edited the volume The Rise and Spread of Islam, 622-1500 in the reference series World Eras (Thompson/Gale, 2002). She researched and wrote the study Teaching About Religion in National and State Social Studies Standards (2000), co-published by the Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, and has a study of world history and geography standards in publication. She is currently Senior Research Officer for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations initiative.

After Today, Yesterday: The Revival of Islam as a World Force

Haroon Moghul

Haroon Moghul graduated New York University in 2002, with his degree in Philosophy and Middle Eastern Studies. After intensive language work in Egypt, Pakistan, and at the University of Pennsylvania, he began a combined M.A./Ph.D. program in Middle Eastern and South Asian Languages and Cultures, at Columbia University. He intends to pursue a career in teaching, with a special focus on the history of Islam in 19th and 20th century South Asia. His writings have appeared in a variety of international journals and magazines; in the fall of 2005, Penguin India published his first full-length novel, "The Order of Light," which will be released by Penguin USA in September 2006. He maintains an award-winning blog, Avari, at http://avari.blogs.com.

Lunch and slide-show presentation: 12:15pm-1:15pm

(Lunch will be provided)

Diversity in the Muslim World: From the Middle East to Mindanao

Tristan James Mabry

Tristan James Mabry is a doctoral fellow at the Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania. A former journalist, he covered economics as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal and international news as a producer for CNN. His dissertation, Nationalism, Language and Islam: a cross-regional comparative study of Muslim minority conflict, is based on field work in Iraq, Pakistan, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. He studied languages in Honduras, China and Egypt and holds degrees from McGill University in Montreal (BA Political Science), the London School of Economics (MSc Comparative Politics) and the University of Pennsylvania (MA Political Science), where he is now completing his PhD in comparative politics.

Afternoon session: 1:30pm – 4:00pm

Curriculum Development

Making Sense of the Geography of the Middle Near East North African Southwest Central Asian...What?

Susan Douglas

Tuesday, June 27
Africa: Teaching about Islam

Breakfast and Introduction: 9:30am – 10:00am

Dr.Ali Dinar
Dr. Ali B. Ali-Dinar, obtained his BA and MA from the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and his Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania in 1995. Since 1996, Dr. Dinar works as the Outreach Director with the University of Pennsylvania's African Studies Center. He is the Editor of UPenn Africa Web site which is the most comprehensive on-line resource on Africa, and the founder of "Darfur Information Center", an on-line source for information about Darfur region of western Sudan. Dr. Dinar was the past Chair of the Electronic Technology Group, the current Chair of the Outreach Council, both of the African Studies Association - USA, and the current President of the Sudan Studies Association, USA.

Morning session: 10:00am -12:00noon
Area Studies

Islamic Religious Cultures in Africa
Dr. Barbara Cooper
Dr. Barbara Cooper is Associate Professor of History and the Director of the Center for African Studies at Rutgers University. Professor Cooper is interested in the intersections between culture and political economy, focusing upon gender, religion, and family life. Drawing upon archival sources as well as oral interviews in the Hausa speaking region of Niger in the west African Sahel, her publications have addressed female labor and slavery, gift exchange as social discourse, oral genres and the oral
re-performance of pilgrimage, movement and the construction of gender, and the negotiation of a shifting political economy through the re-definition of marriage. She is currently writing a book on the history
of a minority Evangelical Protestant community in majority Muslim Niger that engages with the history of U.S. interventions in Africa, the problem of religious violence, the relationships between religion,
secularism, and modernity, and the construction of gender in Christianity and Islam. Among Dr. Cooper's publications are: "The Strength in the Song: Muslim Personhood, Audible Capital and Hausa Women's Performance of the Hajj," (2001; "The Politics of Difference and Women's Associations in
Niger: Of Prostitute, the Public, and Politics," (2001);"Gender and Religion in Hausaland: Variations in Islamic Practice in Niger and Nigeria," (1998).

Lunch: 12:00noon-1:00pm

(Lunch on your own)

Afternoon session: 1:00pm – 3:30pm

Curriculum Development

Islam in America: An African American Experience
Suad A Malik
Suad A. Malik obtained her BA and MA in Education from Temple University, focusing on Elementary Education and she has been teaching in the School District of Philadelphia for the past 14 years. She has been actively involved in the development of the African American Islamic community for the past 30 years and participated in several Islamic organizations that fostered the growth of Islam within that community.

Wednesday, June 28
South Asia: Teaching about Islam

Breakfast and Introduction: 9:30am-10:00am

Jody Chavez

Jody Chavez is the Assistant Director of the South Asia Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Jody joined South Asia Studies in January 2002. Prior to Penn, she worked for three years for an association serving assistive technology professionals. She also led groups of high school students to China as part of the University of Vermont’s Asian Studies program from 1997 to 2001. Jody holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from University of California, Santa Cruz, and a Master of Government Administration degree and a Certificate in Public Finance from Penn's Fels Institute of Government.

Morning session: 10:00am -12:00noon

10:00am-10:40am

Bangladesh: Islamic Rule or Secular Democracy?

Rubaiyat Hossain

Rubaiyat Hossain completed her M.A. in South Asia Studies from University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests are in the fields of women's history in Bengal and she has been a part of women's activism in Bangladesh where she worked with Dhaka based NGOs in the field of alternative dispute resolution and legal aid for women. Rubaiyat Hossain is also a film-maker and her films (Fly Bird, 2002; Dear Me, 2004, Girls Out of Circle, 2005) have screened at festivals such as New York International Independent Film and Video Festival 2004, 9th Dhaka International Short and Independent Film Festival 2005.

10:40am-11:20am

Islam and Populism on the Frontiers of 20^th Century Afghanistan and Pakistan

James Caron

James Caron graduated from Temple University with a BA in political science, and has been a PhD student in South Asia Studies at Penn for five years. He specializes in translations between communication, ideology, identity, and action in the social history of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He works mostly in Pashto and Persian, and also reads and speaks Urdu and Punjabi. James recently spent a semester in Peshawar, Pakistan, and is planning to spend the coming year in Peshawar and Kabul, Afghanistan, researching his dissertation.

11:20am-12:00noon

Discussion

Lunch: 12:00noon-1:00pm

(Lunch on your own)

Afternoon session: 1:00pm- 3:30pm

Curriculum Development

Teaching about South Asia: Creating Dynamic Lesson Plans

Haimanti Banerjee

Haimanti Banerjee graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and has a PA teaching certification in elementary education. She is proficient in Bengali which she has been teaching at Penn since 1995. During this time she has been responsible for developing curricula and materials for her classes, worked on several linguistic projects and currently heads the team developing national standards for Bengali (K-16). She has also taught Hindi at Penn and worked with the National Foreign Language Center as one of their Hindi experts and lesson developers. Haimanti is the Outreach Coordinator of the South Asia Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thursday, June 29
East Asia: Teaching about Islam

Breakfast & Introduction: 9:30am-10:00am

Nicole Riley

Nicole Riley is the Outreach Coordinator of the Center for East Asian Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She studied French and Korean as an undergraduate and graduated from Penn in December 2004. She will attend the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education in the fall, where she will study intercultural communication in the hope of working eventually with educational/cultural exchange programs.

Morning session: 10:00am -12:00noon
Area Studies

Islam and China

Nury A. Turkel

Nury Turkel holds a Juris Doctorate and a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs from American University. He has been assisting a group of pro bono lawyers to represent Uyghur detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has testified before the U.S. Congress and has given presentations

at various academic and government institutions including the United States Military Academy, National Defense University, Columbia University, Tufts Institute for Leadership and International Perspective, and the US Department of State George P. Shultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center. Nury

has written editorials for the Wall Street Journal and National Review. He has given interviews to the press, including NRK (a major Scandinavian television network), CNN, ABC, BBC, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, the Washington Post, and the New York Times. He is a member of the American Bar

Association and a member of the East-West Center Project on Internal Conflicts in Asia.

Lunch: 12:00noon-1:00pm

(Lunch on your own)

Afternoon session: 1:00pm- 3:30pm

Curriculum Development

Teaching about Islam in East Asia

Marilyn J. Strelau

Teacher-scholar Marilyn Strelau has been fascinated by other cultures and literatures since her mother read her Children from Other Lands. All of her professional life has been spent creating courses and units that highlight the diverse world in which we live. A teacher at Simsbury High School (Conn.) for many years, she has conducted numerous workshops on topics ranging from Emily Dickinson to Sub-Saharan Africa to Indigenous Aotearoa/New Zealand to Australian Aboriginal. She has studied China and its diverse population at Yale University, at Indiana University, at the East-West Center in Honolulu, and with the New England China Network, with which she traveled to China in 1999. The National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Teacher-Scholar Award (1994-1995) to study Australian Histories and Literatures. She has also studied in Africa on a summer Fulbright.

Friday, June 30
Capstone Speaker & Conclusion

Breakfast and Introduction: 9:30am – 10:00am

Kathy Spillman

Morning session: 10:00am – 12:00noon

Capstone Speaker

Challenges and Strategies for Integrating Muslims and Islam into the Classroom

Alexander Kronemer

Alexander Kronemer is an trainer on religious diversity, Arab culture and Islam for 'Connecting Cultures' in Washington, DC, and has conducted workshops for such organizations and institutions as the US Department of Justice, Walt Disney World, Reuters News Agency, Yale University and many others. He is also a producer and writer of independent film projects for PBS, including 'Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet," (aired nationally in 2002), "The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain," (expected air date fall 2006), and "Prince Among Slaves," the true story of an African prince sold into slavery in the American South (expected air date spring 2007). Alex also served as a foreign policy analyst for the Middle East Desk at the Office of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, US Department of State, and is the author of numerous articles that have appeared in The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He holds a Masters in Theological Studies from Harvard University.

Lunch: 12:00pm-1:00pm

(Lunch will be provided)

Afternoon session: 1:00pm – 4:00pm

Presentation of teacher’s lesson plans, awarding of certificates and final discussion.

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