Teaching

As an Instructor

At U of Utah, I offer:

World History since 1500, lecture

History of the Middle East, 1789-1914, lecture

History of the Middle East since 1914, lecture

History of Israel/Palestine, lecture

America & the Middle East, lecture

Jewish History of the Islamic World, seminar

Gender & Middle East History, seminar

At Loyola U Chicago, I offered:

Islamic Political Theory, seminar

Islamic History Survey, lecture

Islamic Political Feminism, seminar

At Lewis U, I offered:

Global History and Culture 2, lecture

At U Illinois @ Chicago, I offered:

Introduction to the Study of Islam, lecture

Topics in Islamic Studies: Contemporary Islam, seminar

Jews of the Islamic World, seminar

At Skidmore C, I offered:

Survey of the Middle East ca. 600 to 1400, lecture

The Ottoman Empire, 1300-1923, lecture

Media History of the Middle East, seminar

The Making of the Modern Middle East, lecture

WWI in the Middle East and North Africa, seminar

Revolutions in the Middle East, seminar

Gender & Power in the Ottoman Empire, directed study

At William & Mary, I offered:

History of the Middle East to 1400, lecture

History of the Middle East since 1400, lecture

America and the Middle East (research seminar)

Beyond the Caravan: Middle Eastern Travelers and Traveling to the Middle East (writing-intensive seminar)

Lectorships & Teaching Assistantships

While trained as a historian for my research, I have had opportunities to teach within the discipline of history, Arabic language, and writing. As a teaching assistant, my training as a cultural historian has translated to my teaching practices, and I have always made sure to bring a variety of relevant literary and social texts for us to examine through the lenses of our different disciplines. Activities and simulations have been useful tools to convey a concept.

History

History of the Arab-Israeli Conflict, University of Chicago, 2014

This was a large undergraduate course for non-majors of all years in the college. Given that students often come into this course predisposed to a certain narrative (but not always), I used my sections to teach the discipline of history, with the history of Israel/Palestine as the case study. The lectures were tightly run with little time for students to ask questions or discuss. In my sections, we did very short quizzes, which students graded themselves, to indicate their absorption of the material. I also directed analyses of source texts connected to the conflict. While we always began with who-what-where-when-why-how-bias (the historian’s toolkit), we built upon these questions to discuss the nature of translation in international diplomacy, the power of resistance literature and analytical lenses, such as gender and the environment.

Islamic History and Society III: “The Modern Period“, University of Chicago, 2014

This was a large mixed survey course, including majors and non-majors, upper-level undergraduates and MA students. This course covered the period of modernization and social transformation in the Ottoman Empire, Iran, and Egypt, ~1789-1980. I conducted discussions concerning source texts in translation with students. Given the variety of genres of the sources involved, (including a novel), I helped answer how different research questions and conclusions could arise based on the different sources at hand. Travelogues were of particular interest to my students and in discussion we compared them to the photos they take while traveling (or would want to), and the kinds of comments they might make about certain places.

“Ancient Empires”: The Ottoman Empire (A Cultural History), University of Chicago, 2015

This was a large undergraduate course for non-majors of all years in the college. Initially organized as a survey course for the ancient empires but altered administratively at some point, that meant that students were learning about the Hittites and the Ancient Egyptians before and after the Ottomans. When discussing with students, no prior knowledge on the Ottoman Empire or Islamic civilizations could be assumed. In my sessions, we analyzed the source texts, all cultural pieces of Ottoman history, and I brought in some simulations of Islamic law, and Turkish folk music and Turkish soap operas that reflected gender and non-dominant communities during Ottoman rule.

Arabic

Beginning Arabic 2014-2015 & Intermediate Arabic 2015-2016, University of Chicago

As a teaching assistant for these two levels of Arabic, being a non-native language learner myself, I worked with the instructors to create my own lesson plans on the days when I was teaching each week, to introduce new grammar, practice vocabulary, and instill a sense of turath (Arabic literary heritage and culture). My classes contained students learning Arabic from scratch and students who grew up with Arabic at home but wanted an academic study of the language. For the beginner class, I brought a line of poetry, prose, verse from the Qur’an, etc. for the students to read that contained within it one grammar element that we were working on that week to demonstrate to them that they could access ‘real Arabic’ and introduce them to major works. For the intermediate class, I conducted class in Modern Standard Arabic (fusha) and encouraged them to do so as well, so we could work on all parts of language acquisition simultaneously.

Writing

Academic and Professional Writing Program: “Little Red Schoolhouse,” 2016-2017, University of Chicago

This course was a large class for upper-level undergraduates of all backgrounds, MA students, and PhD students. My sections contained undergraduates. The goal of the course is to emerge with a toolkit of revising skills and the ability to write for specified audience of readers. Each session I led writing diagnostics on their papers and guided my students as they prepared critiques. I also brought in materials from popular culture, the news, their fields of study, and advertisements for us to apply the same diagnostics and recognize the power behind writing, with the goals of producing clear, organized, persuasive, and valuable texts.