On Thursday we’ll talk about where and what the Middle East is and I’ll share some nifty little artifacts that help put the diversity of the Middle East into a bit sharper focus. Hopefully you’ve all read or are reading this article and adding comments to the class blog about the three or four things you find surprising or uncanny in the short reading.
First, I compiled your knowledge pretests into some possibly misleading word clouds. Here they are:
A few things that stand out: religion, particularly the Sunni and Shi’ite sects of Islam, Osama Bin Laden, and Saddam Hussein. “I Don’t Know” was also a close contender in the names of famous people. (I wrote that for blank responses.)
There was a strong representation of interest in sources and motives, particularly with groups like Islamic State, and the idea of difference cropped up a lot. Syria is a big specific word within the general topic of the Middle East–no surprise there. A steady stream of interest in daily life and lived culture, like food and other traditions.
We’ll also be taking a look at the mind maps you created on Tuesday and talking about your definitions of revolution. Actually, we’ll start with that!
After some explanation of the content of the article and listing the things you all found interesting or surprising, we’ll take a peek at the modules for the semester so you can see what the day-to-day and week-to-week work schedule looks like.
Update with our agenda for today:
Not many of you (okay, one) posted any comments about the article, so I thought we’ll need to make sure you all have a good grasp of the basic layout of the Middle East. After looking at our word clouds and mind maps, we’ll do a group activity to fill in some blanks on the region and its peoples.
After watching this map of imperial conquests of the Middle East, we’ll draw a rough map on the board and assign you in small groups a number of countries to research quickly in the CIA World Factbook.
There are about 25 countries in the Middle East, so I’ll assign each group one big one and a couple of small ones. You’ll look at each country to find some very basic facts about:
- The dominant demographic in the population and any minorities.
- Size of the population and the average age.
- Major economic resources.
- Some interesting facts or features about its geography, like a major city or two, natural formations, etc.
For Tuesday next week, I’ll have browse through the introduction to Controversies in Globalization. Check the module for Week Two on Canvas for more details about what to look for. On Thursday we’ll start reading Battle for the Arab Spring and CULF interns will come talk to you about the Global Understanding Workshop.