Islam in Practice (ARAM102A)
This module description relates to the academic year 2012/3.
| Lecturer(s) | Professor Ian Netton |
|---|---|
| Module level | M |
| Credit Value | 15.00 |
| ECTS Value | 7.5 |
| Pre-requisites | None |
| Co-requisites | ARAM103 for MA in Islamic Studies |
| Duration of Module | One term |
| Total Student Study Time | 150 hours (22 classroom, remainder independent study) |
Aims
This core module (required for MA students in Islamic Studies) is designed to familiarise Islamic Studies MA students with (a) a range of the multidisciplinary humanistic and social science disciplines, as applied to contemporary religious life and practice, normally included in the sub-field of Islamic Studies within the larger discipline of Religious Studies (or Study of Religion); and (b) with the corresponding spectrum of religious phenomena that are normally revealed and obscured in the case of some of those complementary methodological approaches. The module assignments and exercises are intended to sensitise research students to all the integral dimensions of the phenomenology of religion (particularly in contemporary contexts), so that they will, after study, be able to recognise and contextualise—and, on reflection, to compensate for—the particular focuses and limitations of writings (both research and 'fiction') and other studies and expressive forms which they encounter relating to Islamic Studies. A closely related aim of this module is to familiarise future research students with a spectrum of historical cultures, traditions, creative processes, and global transformations necessarily involved in contemporary research and writing in Islamic Studies, again so that they are able to place contemporary studies in their larger appropriate historical contexts.
Intended Learning Outcomes
Module-specific skills:
Module-specific skills: A familiarity with (1) the most important methodological and interpretive models in all relevant areas of contemporary Islamic Studies (shared with the larger discipline of Religious Studies); and (2) the different phenomenological dimensions of religious life and practice normally encountered in research on Islam in contemporary contexts; (3) the range of diverse cultural and regional contexts within the larger complex of Islamic and contemporary global civilisation that are necessarily part of the contemporary dimensions of Islamic Studies, from West Africa to China and SE Asia, as well as Europe and the Americas.
Discipline-specific skills:
Broad familiarity with fundamental issues, approaches and challenges in a range of related contemporary areas of Islamic Studies and their underlying historical and social contexts in each tradition or region under study.and social contexts in each tradition or region under study.
Personal and key skills:
Writing and oral presentation skills, group work and ability to synthesize large areas of unfamiliar reading, subjects and different interpretive and methodological approaches.
Learning/Teaching Methods
The module is taught as a weekly 2-hour seminar, based in the first half on the seminar discussion (with some brief contextualising lectures) of assigned texts on contemporary topics in Islamic/Religious Studies that are typical of accomplished and representative approaches in that discipline today. In the second half, the seminars will be devoted individually to individual student presentations and subsequent class discussion of a number of complementary texts and studies, representing different methodological approaches, applied to a single Islamic regional culture or religious tradition. These seminar sessions are designed to sensitise students to the relative strengths and limitations, from a phenomenological perspective, of different typical methodological approaches, as well as to some of the recurrent pitfalls and problems frequently encountered with each particular approach and sub-discipline.
Assignments
In the first seven weeks of the module, students will prepare a common set of assigned readings (from 'classical' approaches to contemporary Islamic Studies) for each week's seminar discussion, as well as the assigned biweekly background papers (details below). During the final weeks of the module, students will be preparing their own individual seminar presentation and final methodology essay, while also preparing similar reading and reaction-paper assignments given by the individual student presenter for each week's seminar session.
Written assignments will include (1) Four 1250-word (5-page) preliminary studies of different representative studies of contemporary Islamic religious phenomena in each student's chosen region or tradition of concentration, due biweekly, at the class for weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8; (2) a comprehensive 2500-word (10-page) methodological essay (due last week of module) highlighting and analysing the approaches and relative weaknesses and strengths of at least five complementary studies dealing with that same region or tradition.
Assessment
One 1250-word preliminary book study (worth 30% of the overall assessment)
One 2500-word final methodology essay (worth 70% of the overall assessment)
Syllabus Plan
1-7. Seminar discussion of range of methodological approaches in contemporary Islamic/Religious Studies, and typical focuses and limitations of each, based on common assigned readings (see below).
8-10. Individual seminar presentations and discussion, focusing on a particular geographical region or cultural tradition involving contemporary Muslim religious life and practice.
11-11. Review of full range of methodological approaches and disciplines introduced in module readings.
Indicative Basic Reading List
D. Eickelman, The Middle East and Central Asia: An Anthropological Approach, 4th edition, Prentice-Hall, 2001
V. Hoffman, Sufism, Mystics and Saints in Modern Egypt, South Carolina UP., 1995
M. Gilsenan, Recognizing Islam, I.B. Tauris, 2000
R. Loeffler, Islam in Practice: Religious Beliefs in a Persian Village. 2nd edition, SUNY Press, 1988
E. Waugh. The Munshdîn of Egypt: Their World and Their Song. South Carolina UP., 1989)
