Teaching about the MENA through the Arts Workshop: “Lived Islam through the Arts.”

Announced by the University of Pittsburgh
Please note Session is held in Pacific Time

: In this presentation, we provide an overview of The Art of Knowing project. This pedagogical intervention and research project utilizes non-Western, specifically Indigenous Muslim story work, as the foundation for an extracurricular science curriculum to engage elementary school children in multiple ways of knowing, and diverse orientations toward knowledge.
We first situate the study geographically and temporally within the local community context to understand the school site and the community in which it is located. Next, we explain and demonstrate the application of social critiques of modernity and coloniality to the design of curriculum and pedagogical strategies that forward culturally responsive and revitalizing relationships with, and understanding and production of knowledge and our world. Finally, we provide a model lesson using the story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a classical tale from the MENA & Muslim work that provides a theory of knowledge, as a curricular and pedagogical foundation.

Target Audience: Elementary grades, though all educators are welcome.

Presenters: Arshad I. Ali, Ebtissam Oraby, Sam Burmester