Center for Middle Eastern Studies - Harvard Universitye-cmes
Curriculum Kits

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The Cultures and Peoples of the Arab World

The Outreach Center has developed an exciting multimedia curriculum kit for elementary grades, The Cultures and Peoples of the Arab World. The kit comes in two boxes. One contains clothing from different countries, artifacts, jewelry, music, wood puzzles, videos, and maps. The book box includes workbooks, coloring books, picture/story books, non-fiction books about Arab lands and people, and a manual for teachers packed full with informational background notes, curriculum material and student activities. The Center has two virtually identical kits, which may be borrowed for a period of one month by requesting schools.


If you would like to order the Arab World curriculum kit, please click here.

Ramadan

The Outreach Center has created a curriculum kit in multiple copies that can be sent to elementary and high school classrooms to encourage teachers and schools to include treatment of Ramadan in schools' celebrations of multicultural holidays. We include literature and lesson plans appropriate for students, an explanation and activity for understanding the lunar cycle and timing of Ramadan, descriptions of festivities around the Muslim world with recipes from different cultures traditionally prepared during Ramadan, and a craft project based on the Egyptian fanoos, or Ramadan lantern.

If you would like to order the Ramadan kit, please click here.

Ottoman Empire Curriculum

Building on our most recent Middle Eastern Resources curriculum packet, we have created a multimedia tie-in module on Ottoman social and cultural life. These resources supplement the political treatment of the Ottoman Empire in world history at the high school level. The musical component of this curriculum is based on a presentation developed by noted Turkish musicologist Nilgun Dogrusoz for an educators' workshop presented by the Outreach Center in June 2002.

The Ottoman Empire curriculum kit is ready for use. If you would like to pilot and evaluate this project, click here.

Islam in Central Asia Workshops Film Project

We have produced a series of five segments on the history, politics and cultures of Muslim Central Asia based on a lecture series presented jointly by the Outreach Center, the National Resource Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies at Harvard and Primary Source. The five lectures covered topics including the Mongols, Timurids, Mughals, diverse experiences of Islam, and political development of the region and featured noted scholars Ali Asani, Wheeler Thackston, Beatrice Manz, Tom Barfield and Laura Adams. These videos are available from our lending library; please contact the Outreach Center for more information. Supplementary materials on Central Asia are also available from Harvard’s Russian, East European and Central Asian National Resource Center.

If you would order the Islam in Central Asia kit, please click here.

Spices

With support from Penzey's Spices, we have developed a short curriculum unit on the trade in and uses of spices across the eastern hemisphere. Students work extensively with maps to understand how the spice trade illustrates connections among cultures over time. Penzey's will provide small samples of different spices so that students can experience their smell and taste, create their own multisensory maps and integrate information on botany, geography, economics, mathematics, history and human cultures.

To order the Spices kit, click here.

Afghanistan Curriculum

We have developed a comprehensive culture kit on Afghanistan so that students can come to appreciate the history and cultural traditions of Afghanistan as well as the repercussions of recent events and the process of rebuilding the country. The kit includes extensive background information on Afghanistan’s geography, history and culture, with lesson plans and many artifacts illustrating different aspects of Afghan life. The Afghanistan kit is ready to be piloted and evaluated in the classroom.

To pilot the Afghanistan kit in your classroom, click here.


Curriculum Kits Under Development

Please note that these kits are NOT available at this time.

Islam through the Arts Culture Kit

This multimedia curriculum kit focuses on understanding the world of Islam through literature, visual arts and the sound arts. The curriculum kit will include video and audio materials (including Quran recitations, Sufi and popular music), musical instruments, textiles and examples of folk art, as well as high-quality visual reproductions of Islamic art and approachable literary works in translation. Lesson plans will guide teachers in the use of the kit, which will be piloted through teacher workshops and in selected classrooms.


World of Muslim Kids Workshops and Culture Kit

To counter a preponderance of emphasis and materials available on the Arab world to the exclusion of other Muslim peoples, The Outreach Center is developing, in dynamic collaboration with The Children's Museum, Boston (a Title VI NRC for East Asian Studies) and the African Studies Center at Boston University (a Title VI NRC for African Studies), a state-of-the-art curriculum kit and teachers' materials on the diverse experiences and cultures of Muslims worldwide. This kit will contain artifacts and information from the diverse Islamic cultures and communities of six different countries: Egypt, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Senegal and the United States.

If you are an educator with a particular interest in one or more of the countries that will be part of the World of Muslim Kids Kit, please contact us at cmesoc@fas.harvard.edu to become part of our curriculum creation and piloting/evaluation team.