Arts & Literature
Literature and the arts offer powerful entry points for teaching about the Middle East in ways that resonate with young students. CCAS provides workshops and resources to help teachers incorporate children’s and young adult literature, music, and poetry from the region into their classrooms. Below you will find teaching units developed around award-winning books, videos from educator workshops, and materials that explore topics such as displacement through children’s literature.
Children & Youth Literature for the Classroom
Lesson plans to accompany award-winning children’s books
Since 2015, the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies has sponsored a joint spring workshop on children and youth literature with the African Studies Center and the School of Education at Howard University. Together we celebrate award-winning books from the Middle East Outreach Council (MEOC) book awards and the Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA). We feature authors, illustrators, and experts, provide free books to pre-service and in-service teachers, librarians, and media specialists, and feature related cuisine and culture. These workshops are made possible by Title VI grants from the US Department of Education, which fund National Resource Centers on Africa and on North Africa and the Middle East at Howard and Georgetown Universities.
Click the links below for lesson plans that can be used with each of the listed books.
- Escape from Aleppo – N. H. Senzai (Lesson plan by Dr. Rabiah Khalil)
- Golden Domes & Silver Lanterns – Hena Khan (Lesson plan by Dr. Rabiah Khalil)
- Building Zaha: The Story of Architect Zaha Hadid – Victoria Tentler-Krylov (Lesson plan by Monica Eraqi and Tahani Othman)
- Amazing Women of the Middle East – Wafa’ Tarnowska (Lesson plan by Shauna McLean)
- Salma the Syrian Chef – Danny Ramadan (Lesson plan by Shauna McLean)
- We Are Displaced – Malala Yousafzai (Lesson plan by Shauna McLean)
- When Stars Are Scattered – Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson (Lesson plan by Shauna McLean)
Workshop on Teaching Place & Displacement through Children’s Literature
Video and teaching resources
This workshop provided strategies for teaching about international migration and internal displacement through the lens of people’s experience and featured discussions from two award-winning children’s book authors. Omar Mohamed discussed his graphic novel When Stars are Scattered, which provides a child’s perspective on life in a Kenyan refugee camp. George Butler discussed his book Drawn Across Borders: True Stories of Human Migration, which features pen-and-ink and watercolor portraits from war zones, refugee camps in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and Asia. Dr. Rochelle Davis, of CCAS and the Institute for the Study of International Migration, discussed strategies for teaching about migration in the world today.
Click here for a link to the video and here for strategies for incorporating these books into the classroom. A lesson plan for When Stars Are Scattered can be found here.
The Illustrator’s Notebook
Activities to accompany a children’s book
This guide, produced by CCAS, provides 30 activities for 5th-8th grade students to accompany The Illustrator’s Notebook by Mohieddin Ellabbad. It encourages young readers to learn about the Arab world and Islam through art and writing. Click here for the activities unit.
Words of Love, Sounds of Passion: Contemporary Music and Poetry in African Muslim Societies
Workshop Video and Presentation
This workshop for teachers explored contemporary culture in modern Muslim societies and its many influences. Featured speakers were Dr. Oludamini Ogunnaike, University of Virginia, and Pier Penic, Art Education Specialist for the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art. Click here for the video and here for Dr. Ogunnaike’s Prezi presentation.