Comparative Civilizations:  Europe and the Arab World/

[ Europe and the Arab World: History & Civilization]

Spring Semester, 2005

Dr. Mona Abul-Fadl

General Course Description

 Accompanying Supplementary Reading List & Provisional Outline

The attached Addenda (3)  constitutes the general pool of resources from which select readings will be assigned.   To serve as accessible background to the lectures, I will try to prepare an annotated course package in a separate folder with selections from some of the above - as well as from additional sources –especially some articles, essays, and creative pieces: as well as some material from online web sources. This reference folder will be available on the reading shelf in the departmental FEPS library at the beginning of the course. Together with the wide ranging readings suggested above, the orientation course package will also provide material for students doing their class project and perhaps also for the activities of an extra-curricular/ optional study circle.

The course itself will be flexibly organized round a number of themes with the purpose of optimizing exposure to the range and intensity of the ‘encounter’… and  at the same time to allow for its multi-dimensional nuances. These themes will constitute a Smorgasbord – a kind of open buffet, for students to indulge their budding intellectual and scholarly tastes and curiosities as they get to explore a new terrain, or an old terrain anew:   However, to prevent novices wallowing in the dilemmas of the proverbial elephant and the blind men, there will be a major organizing theme that will provide the key and axis to course lectures & activities. In this way, ‘bridges and crossings’, ‘mirrors and reflexions,’  ‘frontiers: mythical and deadly’ or otherwise, will all be themes that will be welded together  (at the interface mentioned in the Course Synopsis) by a master metaphor played out round the Tale of Two Cities in the context of revisiting Euro/’Arab’ histories.  Needless to say, beyond its association with a Dickensian masterpiece, this is a potentially and surprisingly generative bonding metaphor that can be used to advantage within each history, as well as across both… One of our course objectives is to try to go beyond thread-worn dichotomies into a freshly appropriated space  (at the interstices) that might help generate a  momentum for new patterns of trust, reciprocities, & ‘competitive complementarities’  in place of the historical prejudices, antagonisms and power-centered, exclusionary practices that have often marked out the proverbial jungle of the civilizational encounter. (I would like to try and use the fabled ‘tales’ creatively –  even allegorically – in  a vein that might usefully draw on some old and new initiatives of a popular genre : a cross of the Kalila-Dimna and Fariduddin alAttar’s ‘conference of the birds’ legacy in the Muslim City… and the modern and contemporary Benjamin Hoff’s ‘Tao of Pooh’ stories, George Orwell masterpieces, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories among others.

Thus, as far as course methodology goes, there will be an element of the dramaturgical, alongside the theoretical and the historical. The historical itself will be approached eclectically combining the socio-cultural, hermeneutic, critical reflective, as well as the conventional power political and ‘ideological’ - properly speaking, the  gamut of the ‘civilizational symbiosis’ – that subsumes the all critical and elusive dimensions  & stakes like faith and identity.  The objective of this eclecticism is to open up, not to foreclose, the grounds of the encounter and to sensitize to complexities alongside the essentials. This is paralleled by the range and diversity in terms of the type of literature and resources we propose for this course notwithstanding its apparent divergence from a more typical mainstream political economy and international relations orientation that may be expected in the overall curricular program.  

The course will be divided into three parts.  It starts out with a bird’s eye view on approaches to civilization studies: threading its way through some of the conventional - as well as some less familiar - work, before constructing the elements for the matrix of inquiry it proposes for its purposes.  This part also situates, or contextualizes, the study that follows, in terms of themes, politics of culture and identity, as well as power politics and globalizing trends.  (3 lectures)

 This is followed by a survey of respective histories shedding light on origins and evolution, selectively tiled against formative moments, epochal transitions, critical encounters, with a view to bringing the contemporary ‘encounter’ into focus.  This section provides the historical canvas against which a thematic exploration follows in the third part of the course.   (4 lectures)

The latter part of the course opens out on the interface proper constituted by the space constructed (episodically) through the historical reflection on the ‘distinct’ histories and their periodic intersections, or more subtly, their persistent interweaving.  The themes or topics selected here will be designed to bring one of these moments into focus, or to follow up more closely on the implications or reverberations of the threads that are interwoven through these distinctive & conjunctive histories.  (3 -4 lectures)

A class activity will supplement each part of the course.  It may be planned round a visual component, (film, documentary, Power Point / slide show) or a class presentation by an individual student, or by some group discussion based on a joint semester project that counts for grading. 

(The above  will need to be discussed with the program organizers – I need to know what percentage will be allowed for ‘class work’ and what for the end of course ‘finals’?- with this as a reading intensive course, I would prefer to have students graded more evenly between their work throughout the semester and their finals! What range of flexibility do we have here?) 

ADDENDUM #1

 SYNOPSIS

Course Rationale, Framework and Methodology

This course is intended to supplement and round up the new graduate program in Euro-Mediterranean Studies offered at the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University.  As such it is conceived, planned, and piloted as an experimental- kind of ‘capstone’ course. Specifically, it is designed to highlight the interdisciplinary nature of a vital, complex, and generative field that is currently being rediscovered and appropriated in the social sciences –  it thus takes students beyond a conventional historical survey of the civilizations in view: Europe / Arab,  the ‘West’  and ‘Islam’:  Or, the fabled Occident / Orient interface. One of the primary objectives of this course is to demystify, to provide the tools and vantage points for a deconstruction and, hopefully beyond that, for a concomitant impetus to reconstruct.  Given the exigencies and stakes of a historically defining moment the course aims, above all, at relevance.

Following a tentative anatomy and genealogy applied to the respective civilizational orbits, Europe and the Arab world, the focus will shift to exploring the dialectics of an encounter that has assumed a variety of topos, tempos, modes, intensities, and directions over a protracted period of time.  Emblematic junctures or formative Moments and Sites (‘Cities’) will provide the venue for this foray.  In this context, socio-cultural perspectives will be brought to bear on an analysis and synthesis that are grounded at the interstices of the encounter.  Within the versatility of a virtual space, noted for its ambiguity and heuristics - (‘City as History, City as Metaphor’) - we broach some fundamental questions relating to identity formation, evolutionary trajectories, critical and formative experiences, cross-cultural influences and susceptibilities.  We also try to tap into the psycho-dynamics of an all-pervasive latent and effective power-relations complex that punctuates institutional, ideational, symbolic, and valuational dimensions in the respective orbits.  The overall approach will be holistic, drawing on some of my  theoretical work on ‘contrasting epistemes’ and related analytical/ thought constructs in an effort to extend it empirically.  Other conceptual tools and frames of reference in modern areas of  sociological inquiry will be creatively adapted to the purposes of an analytic, deconstructive, or hermeneutical foray, as the case may be : eg. Sorokin’s typologies and Bourdieu’s ‘habitus’, as well as certain Khaldunian propositions, formal & substantive, pertaining to community/ state formation, religion & ‘asabiya’ – this among other contributions and insights from a rich and generative field.

ADDENDUM # 2

 PROVISIONAL OUTLINE

I

Studying Arab & European Civilizations: 

Reconstituted/Reconstituting Encounters

(…. a la ‘Conjugaison d’une Conjoncture’)

I.  THEORIA  (The BEARINGS OF A CULTURE)  (3-4 classes)

 

1. Course Overview. European and Arab civilizations Reconsidered: Framing a Study, Contextualizing a History

 

2. Approaches to the study of civilization: Ibn Khaldun, Toynbee, Spengler, Sorokin, Elias, Y Gasset, Braudel,  Bennabi  (Alternatively: historical, philosophical, metaphysical /pseudo-religious : Hegel, Haj Hamad, & some apocalyptic or millennial perspectives)

 

3. City as History and City as Metaphor:  Constructing a Model for civilizational study.
   
    

 

II. STORIA  (An Unfolding TALE OF TWO CITIES)  (3-4 classes)

 

[Opens on a dialogue that highlights the principal foci in the drama – structured round formative & defining MOMENTS, critical EVENTS, Key FIGURES & SYMBOLS…]

 

4.         The Making of Europe:  Origins and Evolution through epochal transitions & landmarks scaled to the above parameters  (moments, events, figures …)

 

5.         The rise of the Muslim World

 

6.         Dialectics of an Encounter

 

III. THEMES (In-Focus:  Bridging I & II) (3-4 classes)

(Topics will be selected from the following themes and presented in individual or group papers as the class is turned into a seminar: Apart from playing the moderator, the instructor’s role here will be to provide for general orientation, structuring the individual presentations and guided discussions.)

 

#   City as History, City as Metaphor  (Contrasting sets)

#   Jerusalem:  One City, Three Faiths (Variations on the above theme)

#   Encounters – Cultural & Literary

#   Mediators and Culture Brokers

#   Crusades & Reconquistas

#   Colonialism and Resistance

#   Orientalisms : Old and New

#   Authenti/cities : renaissance, retrieval & renewal

                        (juxtaposed traditions/ perspectives/ horizons)

 Alternative  Course  Outline

European Civilization & Arab Civilization: 

Retracing an Encounter

Prelude

At the Brink of the Millennium  (2 Classes)

Contexts #1:  Situating the Encounter - The European Perspective on the World, Self and Other

 

Contexts #2:  Situating the Encounter - Arab Perspectives on world, self and other

 

Summation:  Alternative Perspectives: and the Imperative of Dialogue

 

First Interlude:  (2-3 Classes)

 How to study History?  Calling in the Pros  

Conceptualizing:  Toynbee and the Dynamic of Civilizations

Religion, Culture and Civilization; Challenge and Response; Civilization on Trial; Islam and the West

Conceptualizing:  Spengler and the Decline of the West

The Organic Culture; the ‘Rise and Fall’ theorists and perspectives; Idea of Decline between West and East;  Ibn Khaldun ;  Bennabi

Conceptualizing: Sorokin and the Sociological Study of Socio-Cultural Dynamics

Socio-Cultural Dynamics & ‘Ideal-types’

Second Interlude:  (2 classes?)

Founding Myths and Paradigms

History as Memory:  The different versions of the ‘Rise of the West’ - Which West, the ‘East in the West,’ and, the West vs./in the East as foregrounding the ‘west vs/over the rest?’

(Elusive identities and reconstructed traditions)

 

History as Memory: The advent of Islam in the Arabian hinterland & implications for ‘world history’

 

City as History, City as Metaphor:

 

History as Consciousness:  Renaissances and Miscarriages - ‘Orient and Occident’

 

[The meaning of the ‘civilizational moment’ as a moment of truth for ‘imagined communities:’ a recovery of historical consciousness and its projection onto a shaping future? or, an ideological trope for a new dialectic of domination and subjugation?  The politics of culture and the culture of a new politics – possibly a topic for a Euro-Arab class forum]

Can European and / or Arab histories be studied in isolation?  (2 classes)

Origins and Trajectories of a Fateful Encounter (#1)

Religious Encounters

Cultural Encounters

Power Encounters

 

Cultural Exchange and the Cultural Barrier

 

Domination – Subjugation and Acculturation

 

Reflexes, Reflections and Projections

Dialectics of a Historical Encounter (#2)

#          Re-examining Formative Moments: ( The Crusades)

 

#          … and  Memorable Conjunctions:  (Andalusia & Constantinople)

 

#          Turning Tides 15^th/16^th centuries;  18^th /19^th centuries

From the Reconquista to the age of colonialism (and ‘post-colonialism?’)

 

(Epilogue as Prologue) (1 -2 classes)

The Meaning of the Twentieth Century:

The Balance of Modernity and the Rebirth of History on the edge of the Apocalypse   [Timelines in retrospect: On ‘progress and regress;’ cycles & spirals]

European Registers

Arab/ Muslim Registers

Euro-Arab/ Euro-Islam Dialogues /Discourses:

Challenges and Opportunities

Course Grading: As indicated earlier, this is a reading intensive course that ultimately relies for its dynamics and vitality on effective student participation.  As such, a major part of the grading – to the extent permitted by the program rules – will be allotted to students’ activities and class work. (Given class size, there will definitely be a need for some tutorial assistance to cope with a participant class! - class assignments & feedback will depend on the support I get on the score.) – Initially, students will be expected to contribute to a class project, submit two short papers ( 10 – 15 pages),  and at least 2 book reviews. (about 3 pages each).  There will be a mid-term exam.  Along with the occasional quiz, or written comment on a film or class activity, students will be asked to keep a class journal that in addition to whatever work they submit, will contain a record of the balance of their own activities for this class – including a summary of the lectures, a glossary of terminologies, concepts, thinkers, etc…, notes and annotations taken from literature consulted, or sheer ideas generated from interacting with the resources and activities of this class.  The journal is the best way to document the student’s personal growth, and by the end of the course,  it should provide him or her with a valuable acquisition for future reference, in addition to the immediate benefit of a percentage of the course grade!  The balance of the course grade will of course go to the end of semester exam.   Thus, if according to statutory rules the maximum allowed for class work is 45 per cent, the remainder will naturally go for the ‘finals.’  

Note:

More detail will follow on the assignments expected, together with a schedule for each activity, as the outline and course readings are finalized.  Students will be expected to observe that schedule to assure a consistent and effective implementation -  especially if part of the course is conducted as a seminar in a format that is designed to promote a responsible and dependable  self-learning educational experience.   

I am also exploring the possibility of supplementing our physical class room meetings in FEPS facilities with an online extension or satellite class on the web – where students can submit their work and perhaps follow up on some class interaction (discussion threads)… In this case, some of our course material will be available online for students to access and download. As instructor, I have personally some modest but concrete experience in this medium, and have found it quite productive, although definitely time consuming.  Given potential class size too, it might not be very practical.. However, the option is there for some such recourse if it is anticipated to enhance class performance and course quality. As the FEPS website might not be designed for this kind of activity, there are other readily accessible providers for this learning facility like Blackboard course sites – that, for a reasonable fee, offers educators professional and user-friendly services.  ( Indeed, it was possible until recently to get up to 60 days for free!)

( Inventory style & listing has yet to be  revised, completed, and sifted through)

Classical Sources on Islam and the West include the following:

Norman Daniel*           The Arabs in Medieval Europe

__________:               Islam and the West :The Making of an Image

__________                The Cultural Barrier

Southern                       (The Making of an Image)

Montgomery Watt        (See below/ Classical Orientalists)

Marshall Hodgson        Venture of Islam  (3 volumes)

Bernard Lewis              The Middle East and the West

W. Cantwell-Smith

Albert Hourani*            Islam in European Thought

Karen Armstrong*        Islam

__________                Jerusalem:  One City, Three Faiths

Jonathan & Shirley Bloom*

Hicham Djait,               Europe and Islam  (Check!)

Makdisi*                      The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam & the West

________                    The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam & the Christian West  

Runciman, Steven.        The Crusades

Abu Lughod J. Before European Hegemony

Munjee, A                   Crusades –Then and Now    (2000)

Reeves, M                    Muhammad in Europe   (2002)

Gellner, Ernest.  A hardnosed British anthropologist and cultural critic whose writings on modernity is informed by keen insights cultivated in the Euro/ Muslim socio-cultural expanse.

Badie, Bertrand  - (practices comparative political sociology perceptively with a keen eye for historical and civilizational nuances along the lines of his work on the ‘Imported State’ and  ‘les Deux Etats’  parallel traditions in state-formation  in European and Muslim history.

Ramadan, Tarek.  Islam : Le face a face des civilisations – translated as  Islam, Modernity and the West

(Burgat.   Face to face with political Islam)

Thierry Hentsch*       Imagining the Middle East (trans.)

Classical Sources on Civilization

(Historical, Sociological, Philosophical)

Toynbee:          A Study of History (2 volume Abridgement by Somerville)

______  :         Civilization on Trial and Islam and the West (bound volume of lectures)

_______          Religion and Civilization:  A Historian’s Perspective

Sorokin:           Social and Cultural Dynamics

Spengler:          Decline of the West

Braudel:*          A History of Civilizations (trans. Paperback)

_______          (Grammaire de la civilization)

Nawawi:           Religion and Civilization

Eisenstadt        Axial Civilizations

John Mulloy et al. (ed)Dynamics of World History: Christopher Dawson

Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process

Western Civilization

O’Neill, Rise of the West

Roberts, Triumph of the West

Dawson:  Christianity and Western Civilization

Jacob Burkhardt:   The Renaissance in Italy

Perry, Marvin.  Civilization ( 6^th/  7^th edition – one of the best academic texts in its field)

Viorst, M:         Documents on Western Civilization

Reilly, K.          The West and the World

_______          Western Civilization

Desprairies.      Considerations sur l’Occident Europeen  (‘72)

Pirenne. H.       Mohamed and Charlemagne (recently reprinted)

Aron.  R.          Plaidoyer pour l’Europe Decadente

Huizinga. J.

Kinross

Runciman

Herman.           The Idea of Decline in Western History

Burke.            Clash of Civilizations (State formation in Europe)

Islamic Civilization (General)

Cambridge History of Islam

Faruqi,              Cultural Atlas of Islam

Ezzati               The spread of Islam

Arnold. (Edit.)  Legacy of Islam

Makdisi. :         Rise of Colleges

Berkey             Education in Mameluk Egypt    

______            (2 recently published works )
(Dja`it)             (See above)

Fathi Osman     (Islamic / Byzantium Frontiers:  History of an Encounter – Arabic)

Hassan M. Hassan

Palmer.             Rise and Decline of the Ottoman Empire

Akbar Ahmad             

Montgomery-Watt.  Islamic Spain  (Check other sources)

T.B. Irving. 

Tarif Khalidi

Chamberlain

Reilly, J. 

Marcus

Vincent Monteil

Classical Orientalist Sources:

(& contemporary social science sources)

( cf. above: Islam and West sources)

Gibb                 Whither Islam

Grunebaum (ed)Unity and Variety in Islam

Goldzieher

Claude Cahen

Gardet.

Bourdieu*

Bulliet – Islam: The View from the Edge

Watt.  (Islamic Spain; Islam & the Integration of Society; Muslim-European Encounters/   apart from early work on Islam in Mecca & Medina)

Jacques Berque* (doyen of modern Arabists/ North African Studies)

Rodinson  (Europe et le mystique de l’islam)

Gellner.            Muslim Society.  (Selections from his many other critical culture writings in his later years)

(Note: This area at the interstices of orientalism and social science is especially prolific and will provide a focus for many of the excerpts / articles  representing the variety and controversy that exists in rethinking aspects of  the civilizational encounter: writings from authors whose books may not be listed here separately may be excerpted here: eg. Arkoun, Laroui, Hermassi, [Ben Himmish,] Parvez Manzoor, Talal Asad, ..Banani.

[Excerpted too, as foregrounding that class of literature, will be sources covering the classic critique of a body of scholarship that was an icon to the modernist platitude of knowledge as power- aptly  exemplified in and applied to the domain of the modern civilizational encounter: notably, Edward Said.]

Literature:  (a tentative listing)

(Sampling a range of contemporary creative or controversial writers, as well as some illustrative classics – where the writing echoes the encounter by way of cross cultural influences or embryonic / iconic sources for generative themes)

Amin Maalouf.  Samarkand

Eco.  Foucauld’s Pendulum

Grizone.  The Joshua Stories

Mubarak (Aladdin’s Lamp)

K. Hussein (City of Wrong)

Ibn Tufail.  Hayy ibn Yaqzan

Daniel Defoe. Robinson Crusoe

Corneille– Le Cid

Dante’s Divine Comedy

Milton. 

Moliere.  Eg. Tartuffe

Voltaire. Eg.  Fenelon

Goethe’s  Divan …

Themes:

City as access to comparative civilizational studies – with a notable interest in re-examining a staple in orientalist scholarship on the ‘Muslim City’ -

Apart from the standard classics on the latter subject, (Gardet, Stern, etc) there is some more recent work – whether in avant-garde or more conventional Muslim sources. Eg. on (‘Imarat al ard fi al islam) representing an authentic take that sheds light on a  jurisprudence  axiology for urban perspectives.) Or, the contributions by the architect as cultural critic, eg. Gulzar Haidar, Aksoy, etc.; there is also some creative political sociology/ genealogy that comes into play through such scholarship as Messick’s (Calligraphic State) – Other than the spatial dimension, the city in the Arabo-Muslim lexican conveys a group, or community locus, in a manner that brings into focus fundamental contrasts between founding paradigms of alternative cities.  There is also a rekindled interest in the ‘city’ in contemporary socio-cultural histories:  The City in History… & works by Weber, Strauss, - and used metaphorically from a critical sociology:  the Other City…and from a civilizational perspective, Mumford..

Crusades

Retour du Moyen Age (Le Goff, Arzt, Eco, etc. also, such documentaries as. PBS series w. Derek Jacobi’s ‘Gadfael’)

Jerusalem:  One City, Three Faiths (Armstrong)

Dialogue:  (Victor Segesvary’s work in conceptualizing a civilizational perspective in cultural/ philosophical anthropology)

‘Islam & the West’  thematics

Travelogues

Women / Gender (Leila Ahmed, Hamlin, Pierce [Imperial Harem], Charis Waddy, Miriam Cooke, also, from Mernissi select tracts in  Dreams of Trespass/ &  Scheherezade goes West)

Themes & Readings  (Continued)

Another group of authors whose work might be taken as a set to reflect interesting perspectives on ‘self / other’ --- sharing as most do an experience of ‘liminality’… growing up in a European culture and ‘encountering’ in an intimate and immediate context the culture of  Islam.. Having crossed the mythical frontier, they provide critical insights into both cultures.. Their intellectual refractions are clearly on a different scale from that of other mediators or culture brokers, whether professional or amateur.. Of course, meaning the ‘orientalists’ with their different ranks, or the artists, travelers, authors and thinkers whose particular genius was inspired in one way or another by an encounter with the ‘East’.   One of the proposed themes in exploring the interface in the Europe-Arab encounter may be taken from a reflection, or critical engagement with their work.

Guenon*

Gai Eaton*

Michaud. (Roland & Sabrina)

Garaudy*

Asad (Leopold Weiss)*

Hofman*

Begovic* (?)

Burckhardt (Titus)

Other: (reverse gear) –  Select from an abundance: eg.

Driss Chraib

Abdel Wahab Mdeb. Le maladie de l’islam

Mernissi  (Scheherezade goes West)

Ahmad  (Border Passage)

Documentaries:  (audio/ visuals)

(a variety of carefully selected episodes will be used to highlight aspects/ themes of the course lectures – depending on availability, and to the extent that course schedule allows.   In the event of practical class-time restrictions, some extra-curricular course related activity may be considered.

The following lists an initial pool of resources planned with course objectives in mind, with the asterisked titles (*)/ indicating current availability in the Instructor’s personal collection. 

Michael Wood.  Legacy.  (Episodes 1 & 6)* (excellent documentary produced on the eve of the Gulf war)

Kenneth Clark.  Civilization* (Select episodes - through Art conveys the spirit of epochal transitions in the formation of modern Europe)

Bensalem.  1492:  Shattered Utopia * (A Muslim Perspective on Columbus: a creative 22 minute piece produced for the Seville Festival in 1992 celebrating the 500’th anniversary of the discovery of America)

“Gladiator”* (Remembering Rome on the eve of the millennium & the New American Century)

From Beirut to Bosnia*   and/ or  

Bosnia: Killing Cultural Memory*

[al Maseer/Destiny, Yusuf Shaheen] (award winning/ controversial ‘post-modern’ reconstruction of the age of Ibn Rushd in Muslim Spain)

Why extinguish the Sun? (a Maghrebi (expatriate?) co-production w. a powerful cast of Arab movie-characters addressing the plight of cultural uprootment in the aftermath of the civil war in Lebanon- shot in a virtual ‘euro-med’ offshore space nearer the maghreb: and exposing psycho-cultural dilemmas of  the contemporary encounter)

Omar Mukhtar  (Syrian director Mustafa al Aqqad’s production)

Note:   

The extensive – yet very incomplete – suggested background readings for this course are probably too numerous to be realistically acquired for the departmental library by the end of the summer.  However, depending on the Program’s policies and resources, it might be a good opportunity to try and build a nucleus for civilizational studies and target an acquisitions’ policy for as many of these titles as might be available for ordering… The readings will obviously not all be required, but material will be selected and Xeroxed to be filed in appropriate folders (roughly along the lines of the designated sets and possibly supplemented by topically or thematic collections.  Most of the titles so far listed are available in my personal library - and therefore, selecting certain chapters for Xeroxing should not be a problem - in the event that we are not able to purchase the source for the Departmental library.

Once the above lists are completed, I will try and identify certain titles as ‘required’ -  at which point the number could be significantly reduced.  However, other sources from journals, websources, and other literature will also be added, as I further research the field…

As for the recommended literature & material, it will also provide a valuable resource pool for students researching their papers and preparing for background presentations.  This is why I would urge the Program to opt for an aggressive (or, better, a generous) policy of acquisitions wherever possible, since excerpted and abstracted selections will not allow for the quality learning that a good library collection assures.  It would also be a great opportunity to develop a nucleus for a visual / audio-visual library - in which case I could add to the above recommendations in the ‘documentaries’ category.

In any case, I would be glad to participate - with others- in building a sound and balanced core for civilizational studies at FEPS --- on the understanding that realistically, after providing for the basic references and a reasonable variety of sources, classical and contemporary,  students will always be urged to research and supplement their searches beyond the departmental library…

Contrasting Epistemes: Framing an Intercultural Discourse

Copyright © 1999 [The Abdin Waqf- Endowment - M.A.F.]. All rights reserved.
Revised: April 17, 2007 .