Teaching About the Middle East 

Saturday, November 18, 2001 
On November 18th, 48 teachers and administrators from over 20 districts joined Middle East scholars from around the world gathered at the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) Annual Meeting held at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. A special program of educator's events was organized by the Bay Area Global Education Program (BAGEP), the World Affairs Council of Northern California, the Office of Resources in International and Area Studies (ORIAS) with the Center for Middle Eastern Studies of the University of California at Berkeley. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Middle East Studies Association (MEOC) and the Al-Falah Program. MESA waived registration fees for teachers, and the Al-Falah Program has provided major funding for this program through a generous outreach grant to ORIAS.
Contact Information  Panelists Resources On-line Literature Films/Video 9-11 War in Iraq
Contact Information for sponsoring groups:
Al-Falah Program

Bay Area Global Education Program (BAGEP) 

Office of Resources in International andArea Studies (ORIAS) | Michele Delattre, Program Assistant

Center for Middle Eastern Studies of the University of California at Berkeley 

Middle East Studies Association (MEOC)

Panelists
I. ISSUES OF TEACHING ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST AT THE PRECOLLEGIATE LEVEL
Zeina Seikaly, Georgetown University: A Survey of Felt Needs of Precollegiate Educators about the Middle East
Christpher Rose, University of Texas: When the Mummies Ruled Egypt: Perceptions of Egypt in the K-12 Classroom
Betsy Barlow, University of Michigan: General Trends and New Directions in Middle East Education
II. TEACHING THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE PRE-COLLEGIATE CLASSROOM: FOUR PRACTICAL RESOURCES
Leslie Nucho, AMIDEAST: The Middle East through Literature for Children and Young Adults
http://www.amideast.org/


Michael Fahy, University of Michigan: The Middle East through Film and Video

    Notes on: (under construction)
    • Young Voices from the Arab World: The Lives and Times of Five Teenagers (AMIDEAST)
    • Introduction to the Arab World: Islam (AMIDEAST) 
    • On Boys, Girls and the Veil (Arab Film)
 
Kamran Aghaie, University of Texas: Muslim and European Perspectives on the Crusades
Curriculum Unit: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/nchs/world4.html


Jonathan Friedlander, UCLA: The Middle East in Our Own Back Yard: Migration from the Middle East to America

Middle Eastern American Resources Online (MEARO): www.mearo.org
Resources On-line
General on-line resources:

ORIAS Islam and the Middle East Page: http://orias.berkeley.edu/Islam.html

  • General Information on Islam 
  • Maps of the Muslim World 
  • Women and Islam 
  • Islam in America 
  • Art and Architecture from the Islamic World 
  • Science and Medicine in the Islamic World 
  • Music From the Islamic World 
  • Folklore, myth, texts and stories 
  • Islamic Book Sources 
  • Islam en Español 
  • Miscellaneous Resources on the Middle East 
Council of Islamic Education has posted 53 pages of their publication Teachiong About Islam and Muslims in the Public School Classroom as well as a number of other useful references for teachers.

100 Questions and Answers About Arab American: A Journalist Guide (by the Detroit Free
Press) http://www.freep.com/jobspage/arabs/

Specialized pages regarding the events of September 11, 2001

 Webcast background briefings from U.C. Berkeley

  • Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Universality of Human Rights with Edward Said
    • Webcast  
  • Peacemaking: Prospects for Israeli-Palestinian Peace with Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
    • Webcast
  • America and the Middle East with Shibley Telhami
    • Webcast
  • Changing Paradigms in National Security Policy with Dean Michael Nacht
    • Webcast  
    Transcript  
  • Islamic Societies with History Professor Emeritus Ira Lapidus
    • Webcast  
    Transcript
  • How Should We Use Our Power? Iraq and the War on Terror - a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Mark Danner 
    • Webcast  

Interactive Video Tapestry. Ana Pinto da Silva, with support from the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at UCB, has built a "video tapestry" of interviews with young Americans from a variety of backgrounds about their views of the Middle East and responses to 9/11 . The eight interview questions are layered in a video tapestry so they can be seen either as a first-person perspective or as juxtaposed divergent views. It is an interesting project in itself and makes an could be used as a model for similar less high-tech student projects:  http://www.videotapestry.org/

The Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Texas at Austin: http://menic.utexas.edu/menic/tragedy.html 

The Institute of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies, U. C. Berkeley:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~iseees/9-11page.html 

The Center for South Asia Studies, U. C. Berkeley:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/SSEAL/SouthAsia/afghan_US.html 
Kiren Chaudhry (Political Science, UC Berkeley) "American Foreign Policy and the Birth of the Taliban" can be downloaded from the Center for South Asia Studies site. 

Beyond Blame: A Curriculum Unit 
In response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist tragedy and subsequent attacks against Arab-Americans, Education Development Center, Inc. developed this curriculum for middle and high school students, focusing on issues of justice and mislaid blame. 
http://www.edc.org/spotlight/schools/beyondblame.htm

Selected Articles on the Events of 9/11, the Taleban, and Bin Laden collected by Dr. Alan Godlas, professor in the Dept. of Religion at the University of Georgia. Also provides a scholarly overview of Islam and related subjects. 
http://www.arches.uga.edu/~godlas/

Social Science Research Council: Teaching Resource for the  Social Science Research Council's "After September 11" online essay  collection.
http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/teaching_resource/tr_intro.htm

Web Resources for Journalists  Covering The Terrorist Attacks: Links compiled by Paul Grabowicz, Director of the New Media Program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, to assist reporters covering the terrorism attacks story.
http://www.journalism.berkeley.edu/resources/links/attack.html

Literature
Selected bibliography of children's literature about the Middle East.

Sources for Middle Eastern Litearature (compiled by Leslie Nuncho, AMIDEAST)

AMIDEAST (http://www.amideast.org/)
1730 M Street, NW, Suite 1100
Washington, DC 20036
Tel: 202.776.9600

AWAIR (http://www.awaironline.org/)
1865 Euclid Street, Suite 4
Berkeley, CA 94709
Tel: 510.704.0517

American University of Cairo Press (http://aucpress.com/aucpress99/aucstore.htm)
New York Office
420 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10018-2729
Tel: 212.730.8800

Interlink Publishing (http://interlinkbooks.com/)
46 Crosby Street
Northampton, MA 01060
Tel: 800.238.LINK

Lynne Rienner Publishers (http://www.rienner.com/)
1800 30th Street, Suite 314
Boulder, CO 80301
Tel: 303.444.6684
(This publisher handles primarily scholarly work, but it is useful for high school teachers looking for more challenging perspectives in fiction. See, for instance, The Little Black Fish and Other Modern Persian Stories, Sammad Behrangi, translated by Mary Hegland and Eric Hooglund).

University of Texas Press (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress)
The University of Texas Press
P.O. Box 7819
Austin, TX 78713
Tel: 800.252.3206

Films/Video
Notes by Michael Fahy, CMENAS, U. of Michigan

Introduction to the Arab World: Islam
Produced by AMIDEAST, 1989. Running time: 30 minutes. Color

On Boys, Girls and the Veil
Directed by Yousry Nasrallah, 1995. Running time: 72 minutes. Color.

Young Voices from the Arab World: The Lives and Times of Five Teenagers
Produced by AMIDEAST, 1998. Running time: 30 minutes. Color.

(These films are available for loan from  ORIAS 510-643-0868)

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