Dervish

I gave my first two postgraduate lectures this week (I’ve only done undergrad for the Uni before). I have to confess, unusually I was a little bit nervous. Mostly because I thought to myself ‘undergrads know bugger-all so I just need to introduce them to the main themes and concepts, but by postgraduate stage, they’re supposed to have background knowedge, be able to critically assess the information they are receiving and put it in the context of their previous subjects etc. etc.’

So, I over prepared (spot the newbie lecturer). The difficulty with teaching subjects that have to do with Islam & the Muslim world for traditional western academic disciplines (like politics, sociology etc.) is that few non-Muslims have much more than a scant knowledge of the basics of the religion, its peoples, cultures, history etc. And because you cannot afford to do an ‘introduction to Islam and Muslims’ for each class you teach, it means that you are somewhat handicapped depending on the knowledge of the pupils who attend the class.

Still, some of the themes I was teaching in these two classes (one was on the topic of Wahhabism the other on religion and politics) are relevant to subjects they probably would have come across before: reactions to modernity; the rise of fundamentalism; the relationship btwn religion and the state.

I also discovered that the first lecture room was low-tech, so I had to quickly muck up some overheads. Luckily, the second class I wanted to show snippits of a doco, and that had the full technological shebang, except I couldn’t make the DVD skip to the bit I wanted easy, and I had to ‘fast-forward’ through to the relevant spot. (Nothing like five minutes with your finger on the ff-button and a classroom full of expectant students).

I’m very pleased to have the opportunity, though. I’m doing another lecture again next week and then I’m doing Cranlana again on Tuesday. Luckily I always wanted to be on the stage hardy-har!

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