Stirling University – course links

Stirling University – course links

Note that I am on research leave for autumn semester 2011 – and this page will therefore not be updated until mid-February 2012.

This page contains links related to courses that I am involved in teaching.  Because they are just a small part of any given course, they are only recommended for use to my students – do not make any deductions about course content on the basis of the information provided here!  Correspondence regarding these links from anyone other than a student registered on the appropriate course will be ignored.  If a course is not currently being taught, links will be allowed to go out of date.  This page is broken down into the following sections:

N.B. If your course is not listed here, there are no relevant links – do not bother asking about it!
Please let me know if any of these links on current courses stop working – thank you!

Using the Library (back to top)

All books and journals listed in the course handbooks, unless freely available for download from external sites, are accessible in the library – and you are expected to use the library frequently and regularly!  If you find there are insufficient copies of a book, or the reserve section does not carry copies of a particular text that you think it should, speak to library desk staff in the first instance.

It is worth reading this short piece by Prof. Lynn Hunt, a highly-respected American historian, on how to write once you have been to the library and made lots of notes: How Writing Leads to Thinking (And not the other way around).

And as people begin to buy ever more ‘e-readers’ with ever more stupid names, here is some light-hearted advice on how to deal with the books you have found in the library.

Referencing and plagiarism (back to top)

You will be aware from the course handbooks that you must reference correctly – failure to do so will result in a lower mark.  We recommend a version of the Chicago Manual of Style (this link points to the Quick Guide: you’ll probably only need the first couple of pages; more details are available on the main site).  You’ll also find a brief summary of the Chicago system in the course handbooks, and also I also include that advice here.

Remember: your usage must be CORRECT and CONSISTENT; you will be penalised if it is not!

Plagiarism is the reproduction of someone else’s work as your own, and is a very serious offence.  Ultimately, the university can (and will) remove you from your course of study if you engage in repeated serious offences.

Please familiarise yourself with University policy on these matters.  If you have any questions, you should approach your seminar group tutor in the first instance.  Note that plagiarism at university can also damage your career at a later date, as the (now former) German Defence Minister, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, found out: ‘Key Merkel ally quits cabinet’ (Al Jazeera, 1.3.2011) – his is a high profile case, but he is not alone in finding out that plagiarism is a very serious offence.

For some helpful philosophical ruminations on the question of plagiarism, see Stanley Fish’ blog postings at the New York Times, 9.8.2010: ‘Plagiarism is Not a Big Moral Deal’, and his follow-up piece ‘The Ontology of Plagiarism: Part Two’, 16.8.2010.

A note for women students (back to top)

This is meant to be genuinely helpful, and not patronising – please do read it that way!

Many of my women students are often rather reticent to express firm opinions, or apologise for doing so, whether in lectures, seminars or written work.  If you think you may have something right then don’t be afraid to say so: in general terms, men are rarely so reticent in my classes (and remember: getting something wrong doesn’t matter if you learn from the mistake!).  The blogger known as Dr Isis points this out rather elegantly in an open letter on her blog On Becoming a Domestic and Laboratory Goddess.  Just because you’re not in a laboratory, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to what she says!

General tools (back to top)

There are innumerable specialised web resources you can turn to, but don’t forget that there are also a number of more general tools that can be useful too. As always, remember to reference correctly – if you are referencing a direct scan of a book, your primary reference should be to the book, and NOT the weblink.

The Gutenberg Project – named (as if you didn’t know!) after the German inventor of the first mechanical printing press, Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg.  This is the first and one of the largest (free) e-book collections, and has many older items that might be useful.

The Internet Archive (texts) is another great resource for material that is out of copyright/print; see also their fantastic book server.

Google Books – somewhat controversial (e.g. over distribution rights), this can be useful for books that are out of copyright.  For appropriate copyright reasons, newer items are often only partially available.

JStor and other electronic journal searches (back to top)

JStor

JStor

You need to be ‘authenticated’ to use this (essentially that means being on the Stirling University network), but it is a great tool with which to search JStor’s fantastic collection of electronic journals. There are many other electronic journal repositories that you can use, accessible in a number of different ways, such as StirGate (don’t blame me, I didn’t think of that name!), the Religion Research Guide (remember to look at other Research Guides – often items in e.g. history, politics, philosophy etc. will be relevant to the subjects you are studying too), the Religion Resource List and so on – there really is no excuse for not covering the ground!  In all cases, remember to reference the journal and not (just) the link.

Introductory texts on Islam (back to top)

I am frequently asked about introductory texts on Islam.  There are a great many badly written books out there, but there are also some very good texts you can use.  There are three books that I particularly recommend (these are in order of preference – Daniel Brown’s book is really very good, and I would encourage you to buy it if you can).  All of these can be found in decent bookshops, or online (try Abebooks or Amazon etc.).

Daniel Brown, A New Introduction to Islam, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 (second edition).

Andrew Rippin, Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, Abingdon/New York: Routledge, 2005 (third edition).

Lloyd Ridgeon, Major World Religions From their Origins to the Present, London/New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003.  I should say that I don’t like the premise of this book, but his chapter on Islam is helpful, as is Alison Jasper’s on Christianity; Alistair Hunter’s chapter on Judaism is somewhat problematic (a surprise, given Hunter’s brilliant scholarship elsewhere – perhaps that’s a mark of how difficult it is to write this kind of short summary?).  Avoid the introductory chapter and the one on fundamentalism – muddled at best.

I’m not keen on the OUP ‘Very Short Introduction’ books because I think they are TOO short, but for a brief overview, you can turn to: Malise Ruthven: Islam: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 2000.  It’s not a great book, and I’d prefer you to use Brown or other authors.  I don’t really expect to see any OUP Very Short Introductions cited, especially not from the third semester on.

REL912 (back to top)

See also: introductory texts on Islam.

Rouhana, Nadim, ‘”Jewish and Democratic”? The Price of a National Self-Deception’, in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. xxxv, No. 2, Winter 2006, issue 138, pp64-74.

BBC Documentary, ‘A year in the Arab/Israeli Crisis’ (podcast from 2004/5).

Fuller, Graham E., ‘The Future of Political Islam’, in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 2, March/April 2002, pp48-60 (also available here and here – for this last link, scroll down the left hand contents until you reach the article – it is perhaps easiest to print from this last link).

Portrait of Palestine, a film made by the British government about Palestine in 1947 (bear in mind that the British only left Palestine in May 1948, so this was made whilst Palestine was still under British rule).  It’s a good introduction to the vagueness of British policy – reading Francis Gooding’s analysis is essential to understanding the film.

REL913 (back to top)

See also: introductory texts on Islam.

The danger of a single story, a short lecture by Chimamanda Adichie, which gives great insights into alternative ways of ‘doing’ representation – she talks about countering the ‘flattening’ of a story.

BBC documentary archive: Owen Bennett Jones, The Crescent and the Cross, November 2009.

Susanne Scholz, ‘The Christian Right’s Discourse on Gender and the Bible’, in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. Volume 21, Number 1 (Spring 2005), 81-100.

Deanna Meyler & Milagros Peña, ‘Walking with Latinas in the Struggle for Justice: A Case Study of El Centro Mujeres de la Esperanza’, in Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Volume 24, no. 2 (Fall 2008), 97-113.

James Castonguay, Conglomeration, New Media, and the Cultural Production of the “War on Terror”‘, in Cinema Journal, Vol. 43, No. 4, summer 2004, 102-108.

Hala Halim, ‘The Signs of Saladin: A Modern Cinematic Rendition of Medieval Heroism’, in Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, No. 12, (1992), 78-94.

Milne, Seamus, ‘The ‘Arab spring’ and the west: seven lessons from history’, in The Guardian, 19.12.2011. Drawing on the British Pathé archive, The Guardian’s Milne picks out the recurrent themes of imperial efforts to control the Middle East – this is a great summary of how news reporting distorts debate.

Ian Almond, ‘Baudrillard’s Gulf War: Saddam the Carpet-Seller’, in International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, Volume 6, No. 2 (July 2009).

Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (The body, in Theory: Histories of Cultural Materialism), Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1995.  Note: you can access selections from the book at this link, but read especially pp1-14.

Desert of the Real: Jesus, The Matrix, and Hyper-Reality.

‘The Expansion of Christianity: An Interview with Andrew Walls, originally published in The Christian Century, 2-9.8.2000, 792-799.

Paul Hedges, ‘Post-Colonialism, Orientalism, and Understanding: Religious Studies and the Christian Missionary Imperative’, in Journal of Religious History, vol. 32, no. 1, March 2008, 55-75.

The Media’s Portrayed View of Christianity (from Coral Ridge Ministries).

War on religion, the media attack on Christianity (from Fox News).

Interview with Terry Eagleton; individual parts also available from these links: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

The primary source texts used for the session on Protestant representations of Jews are not available here, but can be downloaded in PDF format from the course Webct pages.

REL9C5 (back to top)

N.B. you may also find some of the links for REL9FB useful.
See also: introductory texts on Islam.

United Nations Cartographic Section, for a good selection of (mostly contemporary) maps.

‘Edward Said: the last interview. Introduced by Charles Glass. Recorded Saturday 17 June 2006′, Middle East Now – British Museum.

Halliday, Fred, ”Orientalism’ and its Critics’, in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 20, No. 2, 1993, pp145-163.

‘The MESA Debate: The Scholars, the Media, and the Middle East’, in Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 16, No. 2, Winter 1987, pp85-104.

Milne, Seamus, ‘The ‘Arab spring’ and the west: seven lessons from history’, in The Guardian, 19.12.2011.  Drawing on the British Pathé archive, The Guardian’s Milne picks out the recurrent themes of imperial efforts to control the Middle East – this is a great summary of how news reporting distorts debate.

As well as reading Charles Tripp’s excellent book, you might like to listen to this short interview on Laurie Taylor’s BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed, broadcast on 21.2.2011.

REL9FB (back to top)

N.B. you may also find some of the links for REL912 and REL9C5 useful.
See also: introductory texts on Islam.

The course handbook warns about the problems that can arise with using particular sources.  If you are in any doubt about authors or texts that you come across, do ask me before using them in essays or presentations.  There are, in this field perhaps especially, many scholars who are at best less reputable and at worst downright idiotic and dangerous (names such as Daniel Pipes and Martin Kramer and others immediately spring to mind) these are best avoided for this module: you don’t have the time to engage in your assessments with the tendentious and Islamophobic positions people like this often take (I am, of course, always happy to discuss authors in class or in person).

The BBC’s news broadcasting from the Middle East and on Islam is often extremely problematic, but some of the World Service documentaries are worth listening to, if only for the varied viewpoints that emerge.  Here are some links to recent broadcasts, all of which can be listened to online, or downloaded as MP3 files (note that if part of a series, usually the first programme is listed here; also, older programmes are included for interest, but be aware that situations change!):

Al Ahram Weekly: an Egyptian newspaper; this is the weekly English edition. Although ultimately controlled by the Ministry of Information, it offers good comment/opinion sections, especially on wider Middle East issues (just don’t expect anything TOO critical of the Egyptian government!). Apart from a daily Arabic edition, it also publishes a weekly French edition.

Al Bab (Arab Gateway): an excellent resource with articles and links to all kinds of topics that you might find useful. The author is Brian Whitaker, for years the Guardian’s Middle East correspondent/editor.

Al Jazeera is a 24-hour news service broadcasting from Doha, Qatar, bringing a different – and at times more sobering – perspective to world affairs than the BBC or other western broadcasters.

Al Manar, Hizbullah’s TV station: an opportunity to see a very different take on the news.

Bitterlemons-international is an interesting project involving a variety of writers who comment on current affairs in the Middle East, usually weekly (it’s part of a whole ‘family’ of online publications under the ‘bitterlemons’ moniker).  The 4.11.2010 edition discussed the issue ‘Are Islamist governments imposing conservative social mores?‘

Juan Cole’s Informed Comment website is tremendously useful, and includes incisive articles, as well as briefer comment in the form of occasional photographs such as this one on ‘Beirut’s split personality‘, see also this interesting article about Saudi Arabia, based on the December 2010 Wikileaks story.

Daily Star, Beirut, Lebanon: a (fairly) independent Lebanese newspaper, in English, with some incisive commentaries. Always on the verge of bankruptcy (most of the time, apparently, it can’t pay its journalists, a friend of mine who worked there a little while ago told me), it is still one of the best newspapers in the region.

John Esposito, ‘Want to understand Islam? Start here’, in Washington Post, 22 July 2007.

Inside Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think: this is an hour-long film with a focus on issues of gender justice, terrorism and democracy – snapshots from the poll-inspired book with a similar name (it’s been ordered for the library).

Robert Fisk, ‘CNN was wrong about Ayatollah Fadlallah’, in The Independent, 20.7.2010.

Ali Gharib, ‘Political Islam not the enemy’, in Electronic Intifada, 12.3.2009 (an article about an open letter to Barack Obama by senior US academics).

This new(-ish) site is interesting for a variety of opinions on current issues: IslamComment.

Nikki R. Keddie, ‘The New Religious Politics: Where, When, and Why Do “Fundamentalisms” Appear?’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 40/4, October 1998, 696-723.

Gilles Kepel, ‘Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam’, in Lecture at Carnegie Council, 17 April 2002.

Mahmood Mamdani, ‘Whither Political Islam?’, in Foreign Affairs, January/February 2005, Vol. 84, No. 1.

Mahmood Mamdani, ‘From Piety to Politics’, in The Nation, 15 May 2006.

Mahmood Mamdani, ‘The Politics of Culture Talk in the Contemporary War on Terror’, in Hobhouse Memorial Public Lecture, 8. March 2007.

MERIP special issue on Iran: This special edition of MERIP marks 30 years of the Iran revolution. MERIP is a great journal – you’ll find plenty of other useful articles and essays here.

Interesting interview with Khalid Meshal from September 2010: ‘Khaled Mesh’al lays out new Hamas policy direction’, Middle East Monitor, 5.9.10 (Sherine Tadros of al-Jazeera ‘tweeted’ about this on 12.9.10).

The Muslim Brotherhood’s official English-language website is here.

Nicholas Pelham, Hamas Back Out of Its Box, in Middle East Report Online, 2.9.2010.

James Toth, ‘Islamism in Southern Egypt: A Case Study of a Radical Religious Movement’, in International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 35/4, November 2003, pp. 547-572 – this is now a little outdated, but many of the general themes are worth following up on.

Sherifa Zuhur, ‘HAMAS and Israel: Conflicting Strategies of Group-Based Politics’, Strategic Studies Institute, United States Army War College.

Diaa Rashwan’s book: Should you want to order Diaa Rashwan’s book, the only source I know of in Europe is the publisher’s website. Click on the appropriate flag in the top corner to change the website’s language from German. The book costs 58€, plus 9-13€ depending on which postage option you go for. They only seem to take Paypal, not credit cards directly, but it appears you can order it without needing a Paypal account (though you will need a credit card etc.).

REL9MC (back to top)

United Nations Cartographic Section, for a good selection of (mostly contemporary) maps.

Michael Marten, ‘Imperialism and evangelism: Scottish missionary methods in late 19th and early 20th century Palestine’, in Holy Land Studies, vol 5, no. 2, November 2006, pp105-186.

The Internet Mission Photography Archive might not be useful in writing an essay directly, but the imagery might help with your understanding of particular contexts.

Boston University Digital Research Archive, Christian Mission collection – mostly primary source texts.

World Missionary Conference, 1910, Edinburgh (Volumes 1-9) – as you’ll discover during the course, this is probably the most significant of all the major missionary conferences; this collection has the entire set of reports from all the meetings.

Missionary E-Texts Archive – miscellaneous texts by and about missionaries (take care over this, they have a clear ‘spiritual’ purpose that they have outlined on the home page – this will affect the texts they choose to display!).

Project Canterbury covers a variety of Anglican missions.

Mundus is a directory to missionary archives, and so not directly relevant to you. But the descriptions of individuals and missionary organisations might be of interest/useful.

African Christianity Rising excerpts from a documentary film about contemporary African Christianity; see in particular the interviews with Kwame Bediako and Andrew Walls.

The International Bulletin of Missionary Research is one of the most significant journals in the field – and access is now free (you need to register). This will be immeasurably helpful in essay writing and so on!

Yale Divinity Library has a great resource page here.

REL9MO (back to top)

It may also be helpful to look at the list of introductory texts on Islam.

The Christians in the Middle East research network – based at Stirling and operated by myself and a colleague in Lebanon (the network also involves a colleague at St Andrews), this website offers a number of useful resources, particularly in terms of publications.

His Holiness Aram I, the Catholicos of Cilicia (Armenian Orthodox Church), gave the opening address at a recent Christian-Muslim Conference on “The Christian Presence and Witness in the Arab World” – it is available online in two parts: video 1, video 2.

REL9GE (back to top)

(Nothing to list yet.)

Advice about mobile phones in class (back to top)

I think this short video about mobile telephones in a classroom in Thailand is self-explanatory.

‘All styles are good except the tiresome sort.’ (Voltaire, 1694-1778)