UNCG - MLS610C Global Arts Unit 4 - Texts
Comments under this blog entry are my discussion about texts used in Unit 4.
(Note: 15th edition Chicago citation format for bibliographies; titles arranged in order read.)
[[this post under revision, 10/30/06]]
"What Happened to Hadji." In Favorite Folktales from Around the World,
"What Melody is Sweetest?" In Favorite Folktales from Around the World,
"Youth Without Age and Life Without Death." In Favorite Folktales from
Lewis, Bernard. "Notes on Calendars," "Chronology," "Maps," 397-415 in
Paludan, Marsha. "A Brief History" of the Middle East: In Search of
Islam video. Ben Kingsley, narrator.
The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition. Coleman Barks, trans. New York:
Barks, Coleman, Robert Bly, Deepak Chopra, Michael Meade, Huston
Supplementary Sources:
Stoneman, Richard. Traveler’s History of Turkey. 4th ed. Northhampton, MA:
Nasr, Sayyed Hossein. The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values of Humanity.
---. Islam: Religion, History, and Civilization.Paperback, CA:
The Sayyed Hossein Nasr Foundation. http://www.nasrfoundation.org/bios.html /.
Jud, Eileen. “The Poet of Love and Tumult: Excerpt from Rumi, A Spiritual
“Rumi.” PoetSeers. Abichal Watkins and Richard Pettinger, editors.
posted by Y @ 10:26 AM
2 Comments:
Today is Rumi's Birthday. It won't be a date that's hard for me to remember because today is my birthday, too!
Unit 4, Lesson 1
I posted the following on our class forum under subject: "I'm angry."
Important. The video [VIDEO: Islam video, narrated by Ben Kingsley. http://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/globalArts/u4/islam.asp]
is extremistly important. Islam, Muslim, Shia, Sunni, Roman Catholics, Byzantine Orthos...now...NOW we can start to understand what historical minutia is the pivot point for all the Niagra Falls size bloodshed.
I'm angry. Why isn't Fox News doing compare them DocuBios on Bakr or Ali or Paul or Peter?
Once again I’m vindicated: Religion is a government in search of a country to rule.
I'm really angry at my ignorance! If we accept the following paragraph of rhetoric as productive language to use for the ubiquitous "meaningful diplomatic dialogue", why don’t we start saying that the Christian world is presently the most powerful crossroads for trade – both of commerce, of culture and of religious ideologies.
From the lecture: "At its most expanded geographically, the Islamic world spread north into southern Europe, south to Central Africa, east to Asia (into the south, southeast and east). It became a crossroads for trade—both of commerce, of culture and of religious ideologies. Lewis states that at its zenith in the 1680s, the Ottoman Empire and its highly evolved Islamic civilization were “in many ways the apex of human achievement.” He [one of our sources] makes the point that at this juncture in human history, other advanced civilizations (India, China, and Europe to a minor extent) remained “local, at best
regional, civilizations. . . . [The Muslims created] a religious civilization beyond the limits of a single race or region or culture. The Islamic world in the high Middle Ages was international, multi-racial, poly-ethnic, one might even say intercontinental” (269–70).
Has the highly evolved Christian civilization any flag to wave this way?
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Discuss your observations about the proxemics of the Middle East from your reading and the video.
I can accept [Edward T.] Hall's premise that the shape of the classical and stereotypical hard architecture designs of public buildings in the Arab world are derivatives of the shapes of tents, i.e. four pillars + roof, arches and domes. However, I lose the ability to apply Hall in what feels like a quantum leap when the discussion proposition requests coupling Middle East with Hall's Arab proxemics. The reason: Middle East is not all Arabic and Arabic is not the same as Islamic as I just days ago had long thought all were the same.
How would this information help you communicate more effectively if you were to travel to Turkey or Afghanistan to spend time living and working there?
I think in Turkey, I'd be okay communicating and not stepping on cultural toes because the places I'd probably go are fairly popular tourist destinations, Turkey is surprisingly Westernized (according to a couple of friends who frequent the earthquake prone region), and the people in the locations of sites of interest have adapted to tourists' needs/tastes.
I think I'd learn to appreciate the high ceilings' purpose of drawing the oppressive heat off the person level of the room, the wide and long arcades I would understand as shelter from the blistering sun. I'd never stay to work in Turkey or Afghanistan in the winter; Minnesota maybe but not Turkey or Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, even in tourist season (or during invasion season as the case may be), when more of "my kind" would be about, I still think I would have a problem because of what the woman in the Islam Video says about what to wear and when. The woman wearing her hijab very specifically says that wearing a head scarf is definitely interpreted as a Muslim (true believer) whereas during the years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, wearing a scarf has become interpreted as a symbol of being sympathetic to the Afghan culture. Example: I think the only female reporter who has never and does not cover her head in this recent misunderstood fashion (at least on camera) is CNN's Christiane Amanpour.* Another ex: Just after 9/11 when reports came in from around the country that some women were being divested of their hijab by run by scarf snatchers, word went out through the campus women's network for every women in U.S. to wear a hijab as support and defiance of the infantile scarf snatchers. I asked some of my Muslim neighbors if this was a good idea and they didn't think so. Now I understand a bit more why.
So, I would not cover my head if I worked in Turkey or Afghanistan and I also would not introduce myself by my customary first name, Yona, which in Saudi Arabia is a crude, vulgar, vernacular term for a certain part of the female anatomy and is not a word ever spoken by a woman. What part of the female anatomy, I was never able to bribe a male interpreter to tell me but knowing the Saudis, at least as classmates in U.S. Navy electronics school in the mid-1970s, the "certain part" might be something as innocuous to us as an ear lobe, for all I can tell.
So traveling to Turkey (just in case I'm overheard by someone who is Saudi) and while in Afghanistan, (in case Yona does mean ear lobe), I'd use my last name, carry a tape measure and refer to my Hall, and be real sure to look for Christiane Amanpour.
*http://home.versatel.nl/kraan90/amanpourinterview.html
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