Sandstorm is on vacation, in collegial solidarity with professors who are off in Venice pursuing their research on counter-hegemonic narratives in post-colonial discourse. But some of them are back in their offices, on leafy but abandoned campuses, sweating away at the last-minute composition of their syllabi.
Damn it, they moan, if I'd only done this earlier, those books would be arriving on time at the university bookstore. But I procrastinated, so maybe I'll pull together a syllabus drawn from the web. I know the feeling: I did it once myself, preparing a web-based syllabus for a course on nationalism and identity in the Middle East. The students loved it, because they could pocket their book money and access all the readings from the comfort of their dorm rooms.
So here is my short list of recommendations of my on-line articles that I deem suitable for basic courses on the Middle East. If you aren't in the syllabus business, then forward this guide to someone who is.
Introduction to the Middle East. My entry for this category is a sweeping overview of modern Arab history: Arab Nationalism: Mistaken Identity. In it I cover the vicissitudes of Arab nationalism from the late nineteenth century to the early 1990s. This is the most frequently accessed article in my archive, for good reason: it is a smooth summation of a complex history that often confuses beginning students.
Political Islam. In this category, I have still another general entry: Fundamentalist Islam: The Drive for Power. From Jamal al-Din al-Afghani through the 1990s, this article tells the story of the phases of Islamism through the lives of its progenitors—three of them for every stage. This is especially useful in the early weeks of a course, in setting down broad lines of development. When the course moves on to case studies, I recommend Hizbullah: The Calculus of Jihad. This is a dispassionate assessment of the way in which a prominent Islamist movement has weighed its resort to violence. At the end of the course, when the students have some grounding and it's time to sum up, assign them Islam Obscured, my provocative critique of the way Middle Eastern studies have treated Islamism (from my book Ivory Towers on Sand). If you have assigned anything by John Esposito, you are under a moral obligation to assign this reading.
Terrorism 101. A great favorite in this category has been The Moral Logic of Hizbullah, which analyzes in depth the ways in which Hizbullah's leaders have rationalized (and sometimes agonized over) suicide attacks.
Orientalism.Courses on Orientalism, representations of the "Other," and so on, are taught across a wide range of disciplines. All of these syllabi assign Edward Said's book Orientalism. If your course has a Middle Eastern bent, and you wish to be fair about it, assign Said's Splash (another chapter from my book Ivory Towers on Sand). As reported earlier, at Harvard, first-year students in Middle Eastern studies are required to read my book after reading Said. If it works at Harvard, it might work on your campus too.
Gender and Islam. A growth area. If you show Makhmalbaf's film Kandahar, or the Afghan films of Saira Shah, then have the students read The Camera and the Burqa. My take on the "gender apartheid" of the Taliban, and Western perceptions of Afghan women.
These are my recommendations for your syllabus. Of course there are many more articles in the archive. Visit the Reader at the website for more recommendations, or to search for specific subjects.
And next semester, don't wait until the last minute.