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.