site visits

We can teach the ongoing struggle for civil rights by taking students to the current day struggle via Instagram and sacred sites.  Who on Instagram is doing the work that the great ancestral photographers like Mikki Ferrill, Louise Martin, Moneta Sleet Jr., John Shearer and Gordon Parks did?  One is ...

Daniel Madigan, my mentor when I first began teaching Islamic studies, considers his introductory course an opportunity to help students understand Islam as a religious choice and vision. This, in contrast to a politicized framework wherein Islam, is a problem to be solved. Marshall Hodgson also refers to the vision ...

When I was teaching public high school, a colleague in the history department approached me to express his concern about our world religions curriculum. “I am scared to touch it,” he said. What he meant, first of all, was that he felt unprepared to teach about religion. The material was ...

“Women and Islam.” It is a subject that is surrounded by strongly held and divergent opinions, values, and beliefs, as well as by misconceptions, over generalizations, and yes, political agendas. In the 21st Century, there are many competing projects attempting to define who Muslim women are and what their identities ...

I want to pick up and develop here a theme introduced in my previous blog – the idea that students in the field of Islamic Studies – and indeed Theology and Religious Studies more broadly – often have to demonstrate through their assessed work, an awareness of the way in which multiple perspectives ...