Children of Jihad, by Jared Cohen

As promised earlier in the week, here are more comprehensive comments on Children of Jihad, which I finished reading yesterday. This book has been chosen as a common reader for first-year students at my college, so I am reading it through the lens of how I might use it in the classroom.

I have two major concerns about teaching from the book, and one additional stylistic, admittedly more personal, criticism.

Cohen's stated purpose is to give a first-hand account of the ideas, feelings, aspirations, etc. of the youth of the Middle East (from his time in Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Kurdistan). I feel that his account lacks nuance - young people tend to be painted with the same brush (they are just like "us;" they like to party and drink and flirt and dance). There is really no recognition that there, as anywhere, there is a whole range of people with different inclinations, likes and dislikes, and attitudes. For example, I think that Cohen is saying that in Iran, most young people despise the regime. But that's not really news, is it?

When I teach the geography of the Middle East, I want to break down the stereotypes too. But, unlike Cohen, I don't want to replace one stereotype (religious fanatics) with another (party animals). I think that he observed a particular segment of society that he approached or that approached him, and that he has not fully accounted for the diversity of attitudes and ideas that one can find in the youth of the Middle East.

My second concern is that the book, for all its historical background (in the form of digressions from the memoir), does not really do a very good job explaining how this region has come to have its current geopolitical configuration. Cohen obviously knows a lot, but he has trouble breaking it down in a way that college-age readers can digest. There is too much detail, too many names and dates, not enough signposting or overall summary and interpretation.

My last issue is perhaps a stylistic quibble - and that is that there is just too much of Cohen in the book. Gosh, isn't he daring and wonderful for undertaking this dangerous journey to help us understand the youth (and thus the future) of this region? And such a quick study too: it took him all of five days in Tehran to figure out how to outwit his government handlers to see the real thing. I would like MORE thoughtful analysis about the attitudes and ideas in this region, and less meta-narrative about how Cohen personally is processing it all.

I don't think my students will like this book -- it's too complex, there is not enough context, and there is not really much of a story arc. Also, I am not sure how to use it in a class - I'd want to contrast it with something else, perhaps. I am not comfortable relying on Cohen's view as the "Truth" - I'd want to set it up as "one peer's impression of how the world is."

Perhaps I'm being unfair - but the author of a book with no footnotes or sources or explicit methodology cannot expect his work to be taken as a serious academic endeavor. Show us HOW you got to the conclusions you draw! Otherwise, this is a bit of a travel memoir, and frankly, not a very compelling one at that, despite the great potential interest of the subject matter.

world at a click

In some respects, I suppose I'm a luddite. I think Twitter is stupid; I think Facebook is a complete waste of time (unless you are a business trying to sell things to people) and I am irked when students feel they have to check in with their friends every 60 seconds or so (especially in my classes, but just generally, too). How many of these have you heard one side of?

Guy A: wassup.
Guy B: nuthin'. wassup with you?
Guy A: nuthin'. watcha doin'
Guy B: jus' got outta class.
Guy A: goin' to lunch?
Guy B: yeah, you?
Guy A: yeah. see ya over there.

These are the same two guys who have lunch every day together so, really, was this phone conversation necessary??

But I digress. I LOVE that when I am reading a monograph about Fascist architecture and I read about a building I have never heard of by an architect who is completely unknown to me, I just google-image it, and I get hundreds of photos of it. Now THAT is information!

Perfecting the Renaissance

Taking a break from the Middle East, I'm finishing reading a book on Fascist appropriations of the Italian Renaissance. It's a top-notch book, meticulously researched from archival sources, and comprehensive in its scope, from urban planning, to tourism promotion, to festivals.

I am mostly interested in urban renewal in Florence, but there are some other interesting places too. The story of Arezzo (which so many Anglo-American Tuscanophiles had found dull) is one particular case in point. In fact, it seems to me that Arezzo was promoted on our recent Florence trip as an unspoiled hill town, when in fact, I have now learned, it was nothing of the kind, being re-created as a sort of Renaissance stage-set in the 1920s and 1930s. Hm: you don't get THAT in the guidebooks!

Good lessons for "remaking" a place:
1. Choose a predominant time period that is associated with values that you want to promote. (In Italy, this tends to be Medieval. In the U.S., something colonial has often worked.)
2. Demolish the buildings in town that "pollute" those aesthetics and system of values.
3. Rebuild the "good" buildings by getting rid of any "polluting" additions, and adding whatever features of the "good" period you like, whether or not they are authentic to the particular structure. Characterize your work as "discovering the original building" even when you are adding features that may not have been original to the structure.
4. Assiduously promote and hype your work, both locally as a product of locally-produced values, and to a wider audience for tourism purposes.
5. Marginalize nay-sayers by questioning their commitment to the good local values you have chosen. (Or, in the case of the Fascists, I suppose you just execute the nay-sayers: no need for pesky and time-consuming arguments.)

D. Medina Lasansky, The Renaissance Perfected: Architecture, Spectacle and Tourism in Fascist Italy.

Oh, the places you'll go!

This is just a placeholder for some exhibits I'd like to get to this summer if possible:

1.Avenue Patrice Lumumba: Photographs by Guy Tillim. At Harvard's Peabody Mus of Archaeol and Ethnog through Sept 7. Stillnesss and gentleness in decay in sub-Saharan Africa.

2.Manufactured Landscapes: Photographic works by Edward Burtynsky. At the Boston Museum of Science, through Sept. 7. Quarries, mines, dams, etc.

more from the Muslim world

I have just begun Children of Jihad by Jared Cohen. So far, I am not impressed. I googled for reviews and was surprised to find none with the kinds of issues I'm having with the book, but then again, they were mostly from publishers sites, so naturally they would accentuate the positive.

To be fair, I will revisit this comment (and revise as necessary) with more specifics when I have finished reading it.

Islamophobia?

Juan Cole's Engaging the Muslim World was reviewed in the May 10, 2009 New York Times book review section. From the review it seems that his main point is that those (by which we might infer the Bush 2 Administration) who lump all Muslim organizations together as a united force err on two counts:
1) it confers on them collectively a power (driven by our fears) they do not have and which we should not ascribe to them; and
2) it ignores the substantial differences (and enmities) between them.

Obviously these have major implications for US foreign policy.

On a related note, I am reading Reading Lolita in Tehran right now. It's horrifying and I do not enjoy it although I do appreciate it. But understanding what is going on culturally or ideologically in the Middle East is crucial to the understanding I hope to help my students to build of this region.

Freshman comp is like....

One of my friends, an English prof who has put in his time in Freshman Composition, opined recently that undergraduate writing is not like writing a bicycle, but like playing the violin. In the former model, once you'd "learned how to write" you would always know. It would be a skill you could draw on at any time in the future. It would "come back to you" when you needed it no matter how long since you'd last done it. But in the latter model, writing is a practice to be undertaken daily. You must practice the forms and the skills constantly in order to write competently.

This (btw) is one of the reasons I publish a blog. A blog keeps me writing for an audience (however imaginary it may be!) even when my work of outlining lecture notes or reading in my field isn't forcing me to write academic prose daily. It's like playing scales, I suppose. (And you, lucky reader, are here to hear!)

My friend was a bit defensive, because, of course, those of us who do NOT teach Freshman Comp always have plenty of unsolicited opinions about why our students write so poorly, and a constellation of wonder about what the hell could they possibly have learned in Comp, and, if nothing (as seems so likely), then why the hell is the college even bothering to make it a requirement? As a former violinist, I find that my friend's analogy is apt - and useful for me in understanding where students are coming from, as well as expecting more of myself as a teacher in making them "play their scales." So to speak.

In memory of Ultimate Sacrifices

B and I placed flags on veterans' graves this morning, part of a local project, but the first time we have been involved. We were assigned the oldest burial ground in town, where most of the veterans were from the Revolutionary War.

I'm conflicted about war as a means of settling conflict. My feelings about this have deepened since our trip to the battlefields of World War I eight years ago this summer. Seeing the senseless loss of an entire generation of Europe's youngest is hard to come to terms with, and even although it was so long ago, it felt very present to those of us walking in the trenches.

Rudyard Kipling lost a son in WWI, and was involved in the official efforts at memorializing the dead after 1919. He helped to design the standard features of British cemeteries on the Continent, including verbiage like "unknown but to God." His grief, though, had another side as well - cynical of the politics that led his son and millions of others into death. This couplet of his reflects that sorrowful cynicism:

"If any ask you why we died,
Tell them, because our fathers lied."

True then, true now.

Dear Bigelow Tea:

Your box of green tea contains a bunch of teabags each individually sealed in a foil packet. The teabags themselves have a tag and a string and a staple.

I brew tea often and I don't need the foil packets (not recyclable) or the tags and strings (waste of paper and string). Also, I prefer non staple-flavored tea.

When I need teabags again (in a couple of weeks at this rate) I'll be looking for product with a less-planet-destroying means of packaging. Take note!

Curmudgeon Girl asks...

...What kind of an organization invites faculty to a 2-day on-campus workshop after classes, exams and graduation are over, and fails to provide coffee or even WATER?

Oh, and did I mention that the hall temperature was about 65 degrees? Forget the stimulation factor of coffee: just the warmth would have been useful!

Greening my summer

With more time to do things, I am thinking about household systems for being more green. Yesterday we bought a reel lawnmower. (Yes, it was manufactured elsewhere on the planet, since the salesman said it was ON A BOAT waiting for customs clearance, so there's that carbon cloud.)

Next up is setting up a way to compost vegetable waste from the kitchen. A relatively small amount of our trash (I'd say less than 10%) is non-animal kitchen waste. But we might as well get it out of the trash stream, especially in the nice weather when walking to the compost heap is no big deal.

CSAs in this part of the country apparently have waiting lists. And there are no farmers markets. I will be growing some vegetables as always, and have plans for an orchard, but that's a topic for a different day.

The 60-pound gorilla is of course making our house more airtight. That and making biodiesel in the garage. Ah, won't the neighbors be thrilled??

A wineglass is a dangerous thing...

...and not for the obvious reasons of drunkenness and sharp edges. We were having lunch in the kitchen today when I noticed a puff of smoke rising from the table. The water soaking in a wineglass in the sun was concentrating sunlight onto a pinpoint on the table.

Now I know why there are new burn marks on the table; I had thought they were maybe from the crockpot, which we've used lately after not having used it for years.

B. did a bunch of experiments with different materials and different amounts of water and measured the temp with the instand-read thermometer. (He's such a scientist!) I think 176 deg F was the high.

So obviously there is something to these solar cookers. But could we burn our house down?

What I learned and how I learned it

It's a guilty secret that professors learn as much (maybe more) in the classroom as students. And we get paid for it; what a scam!

The major insight of my first year of teaching was that most of my students were there because it's said that you get a better job with a college degree. They want better jobs, thus it's necessary to finish college. Fine and good. But generally speaking they do not like to learn or to read or to have to think.

Students have no empirical evidence to support the vague wisdom of the ether that "college degree equals good job." I, however, DO have evidence for my assertion: I ask my students on the first day of class every term what they think the purpose of higher education is. I can tell how the semester will be based on their answers. If there is a lot of talk about making money, I'll be struggling all semester. If there is a hint of social awareness or joy of learning, well, then, the semester has possibilities.

The insight from my second year of teaching has been that whatever love of learning may be intrinsic to human beings (I'll write much more about this in the weeks to come), it has been stomped out of them by the time they reach 13th grade, probably by the Public Education System. I'm generalizing wildly - but in general, for them reading and learning and sitting in a classroom are all chores to be dispatched as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Can we recover the love of learning? Can I do it in my classrooms?