New CIC Courseshare Courses: Islam and Africa & Turkish

Please let your students know about two new courses that are open for Registration for Fall 2015:

Islam in Africa: Students may register from the following three course numbers: AFRO 3920-001, GLOS 3900-002 and RELS 3070-001. This course is offered from the University of Michigan and is open to UMN students as well as students from the University of Iowa.

It is well known that Islam is the majority religion in Africa north of the Sahara; this part of Africa is, in the West, often detached from Africa and assimilated to ‘the Middle East’ or ‘the Arab World.’ It is much less well known that today Islam may be the most widely professed faith south of the desert, in what westerners have often called ‘Black Africa’, as well. Roughly 1/6th of the world’s Muslim population can be found in sub Saharan Africa. How did this come to be? How has the adoption of Islam by Africans shaped their history? And, conversely, how have Africans shaped Islam? One goal of this course is to begin to provide answers to these questions. We will examine African Islamic history beginning with the earliest Muslim migrants from Arabia to Ethiopia in the early 7th century CE until the dawn of the 21st century.
Students may contact Nabil Matar at matar010@umn.edu with questions.

TURK 1001 Beginning Turkish 1: This course is offered from UW-Madison, which has one of the oldest Turkish language programs in the country.

Students may contact Pablo Viedma at viedma@umn.edu with questions.