Topics in Islam: Islamic Thought, Culture, and History: Islamic Past and Future

Student Learning Outcomes, Goals, Objectives:

Students successfully completing this course will be able to:

• Explain key arguments from Shahzad Bashir’s A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, especially his approach to time, history, visuality, embodiment, memory, and the plurality of Islamic pasts.

• Analyze how Islamic history is constructed through texts, images, artifacts, bodies, places, and interpretive frameworks rather than simply recovered as a fixed sequence of events.

• Evaluate how concepts such as positionality, horizon, temporality, representation, and contestation shape scholarly interpretations of Islam and Muslim societies.

• Interpret selected passages from Bashir’s work through close reading, paying careful attention to language, metaphor, argument, and theoretical vocabulary.

• Reflect critically on how questions of history, memory, identity, and representation connect to students’ own cultural, religious, intellectual, or home contexts.

  Course Goals

  The major goals of the course are to help students:

  - Understand Bashir’s challenge to conventional models of Islamic history.

  - Develop skills in close reading and interpretive analysis.

  - Recognize the role of positionality in studying religion and history.

  - Examine how texts, images, bodies, places, and artifacts shape historical imagination.

  - Connect course concepts to broader questions of identity, memory, community, and representation.

  Course Objectives

  Students will practice the following skills throughout the course:

  - Reading complex scholarly prose carefully and consistently.

  - Identifying an author’s central argument and supporting concepts.

  - Explaining difficult theoretical terms in clear language.

  - Analyzing metaphors, binaries, images, and key vocabulary.

  - Participating in asynchronous discussion with thoughtfulness and respect.

  - Connecting academic arguments to lived experience and contemporary contexts.

  - Writing a focused close reading essay using textual evidence.

Course Grading Information:

Activity/Performance Measure	Percentage/Points
Weekly Reading Check-in	60%
Discussion Posts	20%
Close Reading Essay	20%

Grading Scale:

Percentage	Letter Grade
≥ 94%	A
90.0-93.9%	A-
87.0-89.9%	B+
83.0-86.9%	B
80.0-82.9%	B-
77.0-79.9%	C+
73.0-76.9%	C
70.0-72.9%	C-
60.0-69.9%	D
<60.0%	F

Attendance/Participation:

Because this is an online asynchronous course, attendance is measured through regular and timely participation in course activities rather than physical presence in a classroom or required live meetings.

Students are expected to log in to the course site regularly, complete assigned readings, submit weekly reading check-ins, participate in discussion posts and replies, and complete all assignments by the posted deadlines. Consistent participation is especially important in an 8-week course because the course moves quickly and each week builds on the previous one.

A student is considered actively participating when they:

• Submit weekly reading check-ins on time.

• Complete discussion posts and replies by the deadline.

• Engage thoughtfully with assigned readings and course materials.

• Communicate with the instructor in advance if they are having difficulty keeping up.

• Complete the final close reading essay.

Simply logging into Canvas or viewing course materials does not count as full participation. Students must submit assigned work and contribute to course discussions in order to be counted as participating.

Students who miss multiple weekly assignments without communication may be considered inactive in the course. If you experience illness, emergency, work conflicts, family responsibilities, technology problems, or other circumstances that affect your ability to participate, please contact the instructor as early as possible so we can discuss options.

Course Materials Purchased by the Students:

Students are not required to purchase any course materials. The course text, Shahzad Bashir, A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures, is available here: https://islamic-pasts-futures.org/