Arabic-L:GEN:New Arab World website

Wed Sep 18 17:48:19 UTC 2002

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1) Subject:New Arab World website

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1)
Date:  18 Sep 2002
From: "Toler, Michael A" <mtoler at middlebury.edu>
Subject:New Arab World website

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 3, 2002

Contact:  Clara Yu, Director, National Institute for Technology and  
Liberal Education (NITLE), 802-443-5507

The National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) is  
pleased to announce the publication of an extensive on-line curricular  
resource on the Arab world. The Arab Culture and Civilization website  
() was conceived in the days following last September 11, as the  
liberal arts colleges in NITLE’s network struggled to help their  
students and faculty make sense of the tragedy and respond  
constructively to the need to understand the part of the world from  
which it emerged.

NITLE, based in Burlington, Vermont and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon  
Foundation, serves as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration for  
national liberal arts colleges as they seek to make effective use of  
technology to enhance teaching, learning, scholarship, and information  
management.

After September 11, NITLE’s leadership recognized that most of its  
affiliated colleges did not have comprehensive curricular offerings to  
satisfy intense student interest in the Islamic world, Arab culture,  
and the Middle East. In response, NITLE developed a website to answer  
this immediate and compelling need, initially focusing on the Arab  
World.

Over the past year, content editors, web applications developers and  
designers, numerous content consultants, and a host of other  
contributors have assembled a diverse and impressive collection of  
multimedia materials on the Arab World, from history to popular  
culture, and from the origins of Islam to Arab communities in the  
United States.  All of these materials are now available online for  
educational use by the students and faculty of NITLE’s constituent  
schools, and by the public at large, thanks to the generous sponsorship  
of the Mellon Foundation. The materials offered by the site could be  
used as the basis for a new introductory course, to support an existing  
course, or to enable students, faculty, and the general public to  
further their own research or learning goals.

  “We set out to create a site that is academic in nature, constructive  
and humanistic in tone, and richly contextualized in presentation,”  
said Clara Yu, NITLE’s Director.  “This has been an ambitious  
undertaking, and the site will remain ‘incomplete,’ with additions and  
refinements appearing through contributions from our colleagues. In  
short, this is an endeavor that was initiated by NITLE, but will  
continue through the collective efforts of our affiliated colleges.”

Currently, the site includes nearly 50 full-text readings, with an  
equal number in process to be added in the coming weeks. In the History  
module, for example, a chapter entitled “The Myth of the Middle East  
Madman,” from Stephen Humphreys’ Between Memory and Desire: The Middle  
East in a Troubled Age (University of California Press, 1999) helps  
Americans assess recent Middle Eastern history from the perspective of  
some of the key players.

The module on Islam includes ten selections from John Esposito’s  
forthcoming book, What Everyone Needs to Know About Islam (Oxford  
University Press, 2002), and excerpts from Approaching the Qur’an: The  
Early Revelations, by Michael Sells (White Cloud Press, 1999), recently  
the subject of controversy because of its assignment for discussion by  
entering students at the University of North Carolina.

Other modules address the topics of Ethnicity and Identity, Arab  
Americans, Literature and Philosophy, Popular Culture and the  
Performing Arts, Family and Society, Art and Architecture, The Arabic  
Language, and Geography, Demographics, and Resources.

In addition to readings, most modules include recorded interviews with  
experts in the field. The Popular Culture module includes scenes from  
important works of Arab cinema, and many links to sites where Arab  
music can be enjoyed online.

Each module includes an extensive bibliography as well as a set of  
external links to sites that have been evaluated by our editorial staff  
for their usefulness in furthering the objectives of the Arab Culture  
and Civilization site. Coming soon are galleries of images for each  
module.

The content editors for Arab Culture and Civilization, version 1.0,  
were Nabil Abdelfattah of Western Michigan University, Director of the  
Middlebury College School of Arabic, and Michael Toler of Binghamton  
University. Advisors to the project were Patricia Crone of the  
Institute for Advanced Study, and Mahmoud Al-Batal of Emory University.  
Maciej Ceglowski, web applications developer at the Center for  
Educational Technology, Middlebury College, was the principal site  
designer and programmer.  Many other contributors are listed on the  
site’s acknowledgements page

The groundwork for future expansion of the site was already being laid  
this summer, even before version 1.0 was released. In July, a group of  
faculty and one librarian convened by NITLE from liberal arts colleges  
across the United States met at the Center for Educational Technology  
(CET), Middlebury College, Vermont, to develop innovative collaborative  
courses and learning modules for the study of the Islamic world, Arab  
culture, and the Middle East. A wide range of disciplines was  
represented, ranging from religious studies to psychology, art history  
to political science.

The seminar, facilitated by Kenneth Morrell, Professor of Greek and  
Roman Studies at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, resulted in the  
initiation of several learning modules and two inter-institutional  
courses.

Online learning modules underdevelopment include an introduction to  
Islam; Arab and Muslim architecture; comparative politics of Islamic  
states; an interactive close reading of passages from the Qur’an; an  
introduction to Sufism; theater and performance in Middle Eastern and  
Islamic cultures; adolescent psychology and Moroccan culture; an  
introduction to the Arabic language; Black Muslim women in America; an  
interactive simulation of a day in the life of a Muslim in several  
different contexts; Arab women writers.

The inter-institutional courses planned by the group are “Children of  
Abraham: Muslim-Jewish Relations,” which explores the rich,  
intertwined, and often tragic collective history of these two groups,  
beginning with the Qur’an and concluding with current events, and  
“Islam in North America, ” which introduces students to one of the  
vibrant, yet little understood, instances of Islamic global culture by  
examining everyday life, history, politics, customs, and current events  
in Islamic communities from Chicago to Toronto.  These courses, planned  
for 2003 and 2004, will bring students and faculty on multiple campuses  
together via the internet.

For more information on the seminar and its participants, see  
http://www.nitle.org/programs_arab_init.php, and the NITLE newsletter  
article on this project at  
http://www.nitle.org/newsletter/v1_n2_summer2002/arab_site.php

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End of Arabic-L:  18 Sep 2002