On the subject of Syrian music, the war, and NPR, I found this article / music to be very moving and used it this year to introduce my unit on the conflict in Syria: https://www.npr.org/2021/03/27/978268123/composer-malek-jandali-considers-syrias-civil-war-a-decade-on

What an awesome experience! Thanks for sharing! I remember hearing this (or maybe I rediscovered the article later) and thinking about what a privilege the teachers at that camp had!

Wow, this is an awesome list! To echo Dr T's comment -- I teach Persepolis, it is my absolute favorite book to teach of all time, and my biggest challenge in getting the book back from the kids! Every year I have to threaten to withhold grades, email parents, make memes, and still I have kids that want to keep it. I didn't realize that Marjane Satrapi had other books, and I definitely want to check them out now!

I love looking at the Middle East Book Award lists each year from the MEOC -- http://www.meoc.us/book-awards.html. I find that a lot of the books on the "youth literature" list are often great reads for adults. I haven't read most of the books sadly, yet, but have perused the Palestinian works as that dovetails with my interests. Big shout-outs Hala Aylan's Salt Houses (one of my favorite books of all time) and all the works by Naomi Shihab Nye!

I'm super excited to see Dr Toorwada's lecture for many reasons. My first, totally irrelevant connection, is that the story of the teach-in at Ithaca High School near Cornell resonated with me because I teach at Ithaca's other high school, the Lehman Alternative Community School, but I have lots of friends who teach at IHS so I know a lot about the community! As I mentioned above in the comment about the one-pagers, I'm thinking a lot about how to start my year-long humanities block as we start school the first week of September when I'm sure there will be a lot going on this year in the media regarding the anniversary of 9/11. Since I have a feeling that these documents were produced for the Ithaca teach-ins, Dr Toorwada's interview and these one-pagers give me an interesting place to start having students investigate why media is produced and looking at the impacts of 9/11 on our local communities. I also really appreciated the vignettes and the overall themes of the multiplicity of how individuals practice religion as well as the intersections (and nondivergent parallels) between religion, culture, art, and tradition. I think I am going to start my unit on Islam with these vignettes, and I'm wondering if they are part of a larger text. Finally, as Michael wrote above, I was intrigued by Dr Toorwada's points on the simplistic message of looking for commonalities and also on "jumping on the political bandwagon" vs creating a comprehensive curriculum. As someone who has complete curricular freedom, I teach primarily 20th and 21st century history (with lots of detours to give context of course!) but Dr Toorwada's comments pointed out the limitations of that approach. Finally, I love the idea of the professor who came in with "What I really want you to understand is that human beings everywhere at all times are just as complicated as you." This is a simplicity, but a nuanced simplicity, and a line that I want to steal for my teaching!

I'm so glad you brought up the two introductions to Islam. I noticed they were edited in November of 2001 and I am wondering whether if they were part of a series on different world religions or whether they were part of the teach-in effort and other efforts to teach about Islam in the post 9/11 context. I really like to have my students do media-literacy activities and I'm thinking about how I'll be positing the 20th anniversary of 9/11 this year with the first week of "normal" school (plus regular first day of school jitters). I'm thinking about using these pieces as a media comparison -- I wonder if Dr Toorwada could speak more to their original use / moments of creation.

I think we ALL deserve celebration as we finish up this crazy school year. I am going into my fifth year of teaching, and I only felt "Hmm I really know what I'm doing" at the midpoint of year 3... in January 2020. Bad timing for me. At any rate, I'm excited to not have to worry about camera angles / checking the chat next school year, and I'm even more excited to put this year behind me.