Suchergebnisse

As instructors, we are quite familiar with students coming to our classes loaded with preconceived notions. For instance, some believe that male instructors are better at math, while others think that markets, if left on their own, will produce wealth for everyone. Teaching about gender and politics of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region at an American college is no different. Students come to class rarely knowing the basic facts, history, or culture of the region, mostly because the K–12 educational curriculum in the United States does not typically cover the MENA region. However, students' lack of formal education on the MENA region does not mean they are unexposed to its issues, which are frequent topics in American media. Unfortunately, students often hold misconceptions and deep biases about women, culture, and politics in the region, and these misconceptions impair the learning process by acting as a "psychological block" for the students. As Haddad and Schwedler (2013, 211) put it, "our years of teaching undergraduates have taught us how images of harems, pyramids, and desert warriors wielding sabers on camelback still shape many Americans' perceptions of the region." This essay discusses some of the challenges that instructors teaching gender and politics in the MENA region face in an American college classroom. No single course can eradicate old paradigms and prejudices. However, this piece proposes some strategies for effective teaching about gender and politics of the MENA region.

AbstractThe study of the Middle East and North Africa region has long been dominated by culturalist assumptions that this region is unique and thus common concepts and theories that are applied to other parts of the world do not apply here. This has particularly been the case with regard to the study of women and gender. This special issue brings together six cutting edge research articles that fundamentally challenge this culturalist assumption by making connections with disciplinary theories and concepts. By focusing on the three themes of political economy, institutions, and social movements, these articles demonstrate variation across both time and place with respect to gender and politics in the region and at the same time make important contributions to the broader literatures on these subjects.

AbstractThe involvement of faith‐based organizations in the provision of social welfare has been popular in discourse and policy over the last several decades. This policy is often recommended as a remedy to the underfunded and underdeveloped social welfare system in late industrializing countries. This paper aims to discuss the implications of this recommended policy on women in the MENA region. This question is significant because women in the MENA region need social services as they have the lowest labor market participation in the world and they have been disproportionately affected by poverty over the last decade, a trend exacerbated during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Based on fieldwork and utilizing both qualitative and quantitative sources, this paper discusses evidence from two country cases in the MENA region, Egypt and Turkey. The paper argues that the provision of social welfare by faith‐based organizations falls short in providing a substitute or alternative to publicly funded and universally provided social services for women because the provision of these services is inconsistent and unreliable and could be coopted by the government. Egypt represents a case in which the al‐Sisi regime adopted a confrontational strategy toward the Muslim Brotherhood and dismembered its services, while Turkey represents a case in which government coopts faith‐based organizations for political gain.

Conservative movements typically promote traditional power structures between women and men and traditional roles for women both at home and in the market. Although women's activism demanding greater equality has emerged everywhere in the world over the last century, it is also true that many women provide support for conservative parties. This support takes a variety of forms, ranging from voting for conservative parties to organizing grassroots activism to mobilize women. Ironically, these parties are not known for women-friendly policies or discourses. On the contrary, they advocate policies that undermine women's hard-fought gains. This contradiction begs for explanation: why do women support conservative parties that undermine gender-based equalities?

AbstractA growing body of literature criticizes the notion that Islamism issui generisand argues that it could be explained by existing conceptions about human behavior. This approach relies on rational choice theory and its derivatives, characterizing Islamists as rational political actors that engage in cost-benefit analysis and strategic calculation. This article evaluates the explanatory power of this characterization through three case studies, namely the Turkish Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi), the Jordanian Islamic Action Front (Jabhat al-Amal al-Islami), and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (Ikhwan al-Muslimun). It argues that although the approach offers explanations for Islamist pragmatism, this characterization has three major limitations: lack of room for ideological change, extreme voluntarism between violence and non-violence, and lack of insight for intra-group gender relations.

AbstractInstant-response technologies, or clickers, are student response devices that help address some of the challenges involved in teaching large classes, namely student motivation and engagement with the material. This article evaluates a diverse set of teaching and learning strategies enabled by clicker technology and their impact on student learning. We highlight five aspects of teaching that are enhanced by the use of clickers, describe an experiment comparing student performance in traditional and clicker lectures, and report results of a survey of student perception about the effects of this technology on motivation, learning, and engagement. We argue that while the use of clickers is time-consuming for the instructor and presents a steep learning curve, clickers improve teaching effectiveness in large classes and hold promise for increasing student learning.

AbstractTraditional writing assignments often fall short in addressing problems in college students' writing as too often these assignments fail to help students develop critical thinking skills and comprehension of course content. This article reports the use of a two-part (staged) writing assignment with postscript as a strategy for improving critical thinking in a lower-division political science course. We argue that through well-designed writing assignments, instructors can encourage students to reconsider concepts, critically evaluate assumptions, and undertake substantive revisions of their writing.