By: Elizabeth Terrell, Contributing Writer
As of this summer, Wofford College has officially introduced the Middle Eastern and North African Studies program (MENA) into the student curriculum. Dr. Courtney Dorroll, a religion professor and one of the leaders behind this program, said she is more than excited to see students of all different religious, educational and cultural backgrounds take this opportunity to learn more about the Middle East and North Africa.
Dorroll believes that there is “a lack of knowledge and cultural sensitivity in United States academia about this region,” and she would like to see the implementation of this program help change that. Dorroll, along with fellow religion professor Dr. Phil Dorroll and Dr. Kim Rostan of the English department, have introduced a plethora of new courses.
These courses range from an in-depth seminar taught by Courtney Dorroll about the region of the Middle East and North Africa to a more specific course on the religion of Islam. In addition to this, Wofford has recently hired Dr. Jedediah Anderson to teach an entry level course on the Arabic language. This course will count towards the completion of the MENA program and, as a plus, one full course fulfills the language requirement for students.
Aside from the course content, this new program model, according to Dorroll, can be attached to any major. The flexibility of the MENA program accompanies students with political science majors, art history majors, government majors and even computer science majors. The Capstone project that every participant will be completing during their senior year is interdisciplinary and can incorporate research from almost any field of study as long as it pertains to Middle Eastern and North African studies.
Participants will be educated about the history, culture, politics and contextual importance of the Middle East. This will provide a frame work for them to better understand and share their knowledge with others who have little acquaintance with this region. The MENA program is also intended to push students to travel more and stretch past their comfort zone, according to Phil Dorroll. He believes that one of the best ways for someone to understand the Middle Eastern region is to go there and fully experience it for oneself. For him, travelling gave him “a guidebook for further research” in this field. Hopefully, this program will encourage students to explore that same opportunity and come back with a more grounded perspective about this part of the world.
“I’m excited to see how far this program will go,” says Elana Khouri, a sophomore at Wofford and one of the first students to sign up for the MENA program. “There’s a lot going on in that area right now that people aren’t aware of. This might make them aware of these issues and give them something to relate to.”
In the future, both Courtney Dorroll and Phil Dorroll hope to see an ethnography course added to the program as well as a course on gender and sexuality in the Middle East.
