from VCCA Journal, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 1996, 6-10
© Copyright 1996 VCCA Journal
With these simple statements, Professor Richard Eaton of the University of Arizona succinctly summed up an idea that had been in the minds of faculty participating in a summer study seminar sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) at Northern Virginia Community College (NVCC). In fact, by the fifth week of the seminar it had become increasingly clear that the Islamic world was something far more complicated than simply the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, the Muslim world is an extremely complex and diverse world, just as diverse as the "Christian world," and one of the main benefits of the seminar was to undo Western stereotypes of Muslims that are widespread and damaging: Arabs dressed in long flowing cloaks, riding camels across sand dunes, harems of women in tow.
In May 1994, eighteen members of the faculty at NVCC began a year-long, NEH-funded study of the history and cultures of the Islamic world. The initial desire to pursue the grant came from history and literature faculty who wished to broaden their narrowly-based, western-oriented courses. To teach world history and literature effectively, faculty needed to know more about the entire world, yet where was the training to come from? How could the massive body of material called "the world" be approached?
After initial discussions with grant officials at NEH on the feasibility of a study project, it became clear that just wanting to study the rest of the world was not an effective means of proceeding. What was required was a conceptual framework for studying the non-western world--in other words, some mechanism that allowed the examination and analysis of the rest of the world coherently. One possibility that presented itself was to study Islam, which acts as a unifying, global force to unite many disparate cultures and peoples into one community through religion. Islam was also present in many of the areas of the world that faculty wanted to learn more about: Africa, South Asia, and the Far East.
With the decision taken to use Islam as a focus to study the world, Professors Charles Evans, Agatha Taormina, and Diane Thompson developed three main theses centered on Islam in a proposal written with the help of Professors Charles Butterworth (University of Maryland) and Julia Clancy-Smith (University of Virginia). NEH and professional contacts helped to locate these consultants. Project goals were then developed and connected to these theses. The three goals (discussed below) became the foci for the presentations of scholars brought in during a summer program.
After deciding upon the project goals and obtaining the promise of college administrative support at all levels, the next step was to find scholars. Professors Butterworth and Clancy-Smith were very helpful in this regard, as was the staff at NEH. What was especially striking was the willingness of top faculty at research institutions throughout the United States to become involved in a study project at a community college in Virginia. Within a month and after many long telephone conversations, a team of scholars had been recruited and had agreed upon the actual daily seminar schedule.
For the proposal itself, the grant team also had to find willing participants at NVCC. When the college eventually received notification of the award, participants were asked for a full commitment; they could not teach during the six-week summer seminar. New faculty were added to replace those who dropped out. In all, participants came from a variety of disciplines and from all five campuses. Most joined with the intention of expanding their humanities course offerings and with the hope of fostering a sense of collegiality among faculty.
First Goal
The Islamic world is a global, multi-cultural community that has evolved through a long and complicated historical process involving many different societies. Islam has created that global community through a set of religious beliefs that link many different cultures: Mediterranean, Arabian, African, Indian, and Turkish. Completion of the project will provide faculty with new material about Islam to incorporate into the humanities curriculum and also help the faculty and administration to provide a broader, multi-cultural approach to the humanities.
During the project, Professors Julia Clancy-Smith and Richard Eaton made important presentations addressing the global nature of Islam. Clancy-Smith, who taught the first week of the seminar, described the origin and expansion of Islam and emphasized the great cultural diversity of the early Islamic empire, especially the Abbasid caliphate. By the end of the first week, participants realized that the seminar should have been called Islamic "cultures" and that the idea of Islamic diversity was becoming the dominant theme of the seminar.
During the week participants spent on South Asia with Richard Eaton--which, in the views of many of the participants, was the most interesting part of the seminar--his statements, quoted above, brought about a dramatic reassessment of their understanding of Islam, i.e., that the real center of the Islamic world is India and not the Middle East.
What was very beneficial to NVCC was the fact that many faculty projects deriving from the seminar addressed this first goal with material drawn from the seminar. For example, a historian used Arab accounts of the Crusades to show the interaction that really occurred between East and West and also to help students work on their critical-thinking skills. A music professor included segments on Islamic music in his introductory course survey, while some English faculty added the 1001 Nights or stories by Naguib Mahfousz or Tayeb Salih in their literature courses.
Second Goal
Islam's historical evolution had an enormous impact on the development of Western art, science, philosophy, and literature. Thus, another goal was to focus on the often unrecognized heritage that Islam brought to the Western tradition. During the summer, a series of speakers addressed this issue, beginning with Professor Martha Rampton (Hollins College) who examined points of contact between the Muslim and European worlds in the Middle Ages: Spain, Sicily, and the Crusades. It was clear that such interaction was overwhelmingly positive, especially in Spain. The seminar then explored the impact of Islam on the arts, philosophy, and literature. Professor Dan Ehnbom (University of Virginia) examined art and included a field trip to the Freer Gallery in Washington, D.C. Professor Michael Blaustein (St. John's College) tackled the fascinating subject of philosophy, and Professor Amira El-Zein (Georgetown University) spoke on literature.
Again, much material covered during the seminar found its way into course offerings through faculty projects. For example, participants have used excerpts from El Cid in Western civilization and literature courses. A humanities professor added information about the art of Andalusia in his course, while a horticulturalist used material derived from landscaping design in Andalusia in his course. The philosophy reading also helped participants to understand better Medieval scholasticism and Thomas Aquinas.
Third Goal
Modern Islamic society both reacts to and affects the broader global community, and the study of Islam will yield an understanding of present-day world affairs. This theme was the topic of discussion during the last week of the seminar with presentations by Professors John Voll (University of New Hampshire) and Asad Abu-Khalil (California State University-Stanislaus). Professor Voll carefully noted the distinct paths taken by Egypt and Turkey in their encounters with the modern West in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries--one positive and one negative; while Professor Khalil focussed his attention on Muslim reformers and their difficulties in dealing with ideas such as democracy, feminism, and fundamentalism. Both presenters answered questions about the modern Middle East, allowing faculty to develop a better understanding of the dynamic processes at work in the region.
Finally, the project had a number of ancillary goals, some of which proved to be very important. For example, the project intended to promote communication between diverse disciplines and across campuses, i.e., to break down institutional barriers. Faculty also wanted to renew themselves and catch up on training that they had never really received in graduate school. The growing diversity of the NVCC student body, including Muslim students from abroad and from America, also commanded increased awareness and understanding. In fact, one of the faculty projects was for a counselor to conduct a workshop for other counselors. In addition, faculty desired to promote critical-thinking skills among students, and one effective approach to achieving that aim is to present students with challenging material about other societies.
The set-up of the seminar was straight forward and completely worked out as part of the original grant proposal: six weeks of classes, five days a week, 9:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with a morning break and a lunch break--though the breaks tended to lengthen as the summer wore on. In addition to the presentations of scholars, the project also included visits to museums, panel discussions, music, slide presentations, and movies. Scholars were encouraged to employ active teaching techniques as much as possible. As the seminar proceeded, complaints about the intensity of the program gave way to gratitude and then to regrets that it was all over.
Throughout the seminar, the program attempted to emphasize practical materials that could be used in courses--for example, detailed discussions of tales from the 1001 Nights or El Cid, or of Arab views of the Crusades. The participating scholars were asked to develop their presentations along these lines. The scholars also provided useful bibliographies as well as information about other resources.
After the summer seminar, the study of Islam continued through the academic year with a series of lectures and meetings. This was also part of the original proposal to NEH. In September 1994, Professor Charles Butterworth (University of Maryland) spoke on Ibn Tufayl's philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, which was written in the fourteenth century. The novel discusses a boy growing up isolated from all human contact on a deserted island where he reaches the highest possible state of human understanding. Ultimately, however, he is unable to communicate that to other humans when he returns to society. In November 1994, Professor Richard Haag (Northern Virginia Community College) spoke on the topic of sufism. Professor Haag has been a student of sufism for almost a dozen years, and he was able to convey to seminar participants many of the goals of and devices used by sufis. Finally, in April 1995, participants met to discuss the novel Fountain & Tomb by Naguib Mahfousz and to review seminar projects. As part of the seminar, all participants had to produce projects and share the results of those projects. Those faculty projects showed that the faculty used the experiences and material from the seminar in a number of ways. Many faculty put ideas directly in their courses-- for example, in western civilization, world literature, or American literature. Some others organized discipline or counseling workshops, while others wrote and presented papers.
A major part of the grant proposal was the promise of dissemination. For the NEH, this was especially important given the fact that only eighteen faculty (out of 425 at NVCC) had the opportunity to participate. Thus, the grant proposed many avenues of disseminating the information from the summer seminar, such as the collection, publication, and distribution of the projects. One of the most important means of sharing information at our college was the presentation of a video made about the program. In August 1994, the grant directors showed the video and explained the purpose of the project to a full house at the college's annual faculty orientation program. The video was also shown as part of panel presentations at the southern regional conference of the Community College Humanities Association and at the Virginia Community College professional development conference. A last means of dissemination was the publication of articles, such as this one, in various journals to provide information about the diversity and complexity of the Islamic world.
Thus, what seems to have appealed to the NEH in funding this proposal was the strength of the scholars who agreed to be involved, the detailed nature of the proposal, the strong administrative support from the college, the promise of substantial dissemination, and the fact that all activities were completely described in the proposal, including the subject of each lecture and the accompanying reading list.
Charles T. Evans graduated from the University of Virginia and has been teaching history at Northern Virginia Community College since 1991. He will be directing another NEH-funded institute on Islamic history and culture in the summer of 1996 at the University of Arizona.