Spatializing and Materializing the Teaching of Muslim Issues in U.S. Undergraduate Geography Courses

This research note is a sympathetic response to Ronald Runeric, “A Strategy for Approaching the Sensitive Topic of Islamic Fundamentalism in Cultural Geography Courses for American Undergraduates,” The Arab World Geographer 14(4), 2011. Using Runeric's emphasis on analogy as a teaching strategy, we point out a limitation and then show how it can be redeployed effectively by contextualizing Muslim practices and focusing on their materiality. We want to suggest that by contextualizing and materializing concepts such as fundamentalism, otherness, and terrorism, for example, we build students’ ability to critique the problem of stereotyping that more generalized treatments leave unaddressed. We provide two alternative analogical approaches that have been effective classroom models.