Learning Goals in the Global Islamic Studies Major

The Global Islamic Studies Major

The Global Islamic Studies Major (GIS) is a transdisciplinary approach to questions related to the cultural, political, and religious lives of Muslims globally. The GIS program aims to deepen our understanding of Muslim societies in the contemporary global context, in light of the fact that Islam is one of the world’s fastest growing religions. Islamic expressions take different shapes in different contexts. Global Islamic Studies is a reimagining of Area Studies and Islamic Studies that seeks to answer old questions with new answers and raise new questions that arise from new situations. Area Studies grew in the post-WWII United States from a desire to know in-depth non-Western regions of the world, including their languages, culture, and politics. Global Islamic Studies is a program that, while inclusive of Arabs and the Middle East, defies conventional framing of the study of Islam and Muslims in these narrow and misleading terms, and challenges stubborn, dangerous stereotypes about Muslims as historically alien to the “West,” and Islam as incompatible with European values and culture. Globalization over the last few decades has resulted in increased movement of peoples, and new patterns of contact, exchange, and mutual understanding among the world’s populations. New technologies have allowed people worldwide to access and embrace cultural practices, objects, and ideas, in novel ways. This has generated new tensions, and fears of loss of “traditional” ways.

Global Islamic Studies is a means of studying and creating specialized knowledge on an issue or region while also having the necessary broad view of the global context. In this major, an understanding of the processes of globalization is a guiding principle in addressing Muslim communities and their global networks, and current conflicts and examples concord between and in Muslim societies. Issues and concepts such as citizenship, identity, religious/secular divide, justice, Islamophobia, jihad, and Orientalism are among the topics covered in a Global Islamic Studies major/minor.

Global Islamic Studies integrates existing faculty expertise on Islam dispersed across various academic departments such as Art History and Architectural Studies, Classics, English, German Studies, Government and International Relations, History, Religious Studies, and Sociology.  Faculty research and teaching focused on Islam and Muslim communities across time and world regions, including Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, North America, Russia, and South Asia affords students the opportunity to study Islam and the world’s Muslim communities in deep historical, comparative, and global contexts.

One of the most innovative interdisciplinary programs at the College, Global Islamic Studies is central to the new Connections curriculum that is centered on the study of world languages and cultures, and commitment to critical study of how the hierarchical world we know today came to be constructed and legitimized.

Learning goals of the Global Islamic Studies Major

Cultural Literacy

Students will gain foundational knowledge about Muslim societies and their diversity through the gateway course, “Introduction to Global Islamic Studies” (GIS 102) and in other courses and extracurricular activities. Students are encouraged to become informed citizens of an increasingly diverse world.

Linguistic Competency

Students will undertake advanced language study and are encouraged to study away to a site related to their interests. Proficiency in a language will make it possible for students to conduct original research, secure internships, and use their language skills for future employment and to prepare for graduate study.

Research

As students advance through the program, they will choose a focus of study in coordination with their language concentration in order to produce research on Islam and Muslim communities that intersects with the broader political, economic, cultural and social dynamics of emerging trends in the field. Through the gateway course and other electives, students should be able to articulate and critique relevant theories and to recognize scholarly conventions and debates in the field. In their senior year, students will be able to apply concepts and theories from their previous courses to their final project through an advanced Senior Seminar or an independent study.