18.08.2020

“Islam and MENA are minority fields within the Western academy.”

In Conversation with Research Alumna Dr. Courtney M. Dorroll, Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies and Religion at Wofford College, U.S.

In summer 2016 I taught a Teach@Tübingen course, Ethnography of Islam in Germany, for the Oriental and Islamic Studies Department. My relationship with the University of Tübingen began the summer before, 2015, when I was invited to conduct research at the University of Tübingen’s Center for Islamic Theology. I had the great fortune to meet Dr. Mouez Khalfaoui at a conference in the US and I interviewed him for a pedagogical project I was working on regarding gathering voices/stories of individual Muslims told by Muslims to use in my courses as a pedagogical tool. After his interview we spoke about the Center in Tübingen as another site for my ethnographic data collection and that is what instigated my first trip. It was our shared interest in pedagogy of Islamic Studies that continues to shape our professional connection.

I am currently based in South Carolina at a small, liberal arts college, Wofford College. I founded and co-coordinate Wofford’s Middle Eastern and North African Studies Program and am an Assistant Professor in the Religion Department. I teach classes on ethnography, Middle Eastern Studies, Muslims in America and am now expanding my courses to include pedagogy of self-care and a new stand-alone course on “Caring for the Self: A Global Guide”. My work on reflecting on the emotional labor involved in teaching politicized, difficult topics has lead me to incorporate self-care rituals for myself as an instructor and in my syllabi so as to model good self-care for my students. I want to honor the heavy lift that occurs when students take my classes and recognize the emotional vulnerability it might take for some students to explore an area of the world that has been maligned by Western media or has not been focused on in primary, middle or high school years. Islam and MENA are also minority fields within the Western academy so it is also space to recognize what added tasks must be taken on by the instructor who teaches these fields that are viewed as outside the often agreed upon canon of what is typically taught. My current research project involves a grant to help me collect data on faculty, staff and students engaged with self-care pedagogy to see what affects this style of teaching has on students and instructors. The issue and importance of care in the classroom has been exacerbated during this global pandemic.