Using a system so highly randomized that I can’t even remember how I picked the order, here is our schedule for 5-minute presentations. You’ll hit on three points: What is the topic (or topics) of your blog? How did your … Continue reading
We’re in our last week of content for the semester. Today we’re discussing the controversy of great powers conflict and Thursday we look at our final chapter from Battle for the Arab Spring, focusing on the rise of Islamist politics … Continue reading
Our reading for today was Khawla Dunia’s “And the Revolutions Go On,” the final chapter of Diaries of an Unfinished Revolution. It’s significant that this chapter ends the book since Syria’s conflict has become something like a litmus test of … Continue reading
For today’s class I want to try working with Diigo as a class activity, as a way of saying goodbye to the platform after your final Diigo curations yesterday. To tie together the reading we had for today from Diaries of … Continue reading
We’re going to start our classes this week with reading quizzes on Canvas. There shouldn’t be any “gotcha” questions in them. As long as you read and pay an appropriate amount of attention to significant details, they should be a … Continue reading
As we briefly touch ground before going off for another long-ish holiday, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on the themes and grand motifs of the first half of the semester and contemplate what’s coming up in the next five … Continue reading
This week on Tuesday we’ll connect some ideas that I introduced briefly about trade liberalization to the evolution of Egypt’s economy through the 1970s and 1980s. We’ll be reading this article that examines that question in detail. We’re also officially … Continue reading
On Thursday this week I introduced the assignment sheet for the Global Understanding Workshop and we discussed the relationship between forms of mass media and revolutions. We’ll continue with many of those ideas on Tuesday next week when we discuss … Continue reading
On Tuesday Brown University’s Dr. Sarah Tobin will be visiting our class by Skype. Dr. Tobin is an anthropologist with extensive fieldwork in Jordan and lately has been studying Syrian refugee camps there–including Za’atari, Azraq and Cyber City. For Tuesday, … Continue reading
Today our immediate goal in class is experimental: Can we use remote sensing techniques–at least very basic ones–to empathize with or evaluate another person’s sentiments. The collateral goal of this experiment is to give you some practice with using your … Continue reading