Representations of Islam and Arab Societies in Western Secondary Textbooks

Since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the textbooks in Arab and Islamic nation‐states have been carefully critiqued for any content that Westerners view as promoting hate or violence against non‐Muslims. Very little has been said, however, about the portrayals of Islamic and Arab society in Western textbooks. This report investigates the perspectives and ideologies concerning representations of Islam and Arab societies in textbooks worldwide, and specifically in Western countries' national education systems. Seventy‐two textbooks from 15 Western countries and Israel were examined to investigate the included and excluded content related to Islam and Arab societies. This research found that those countries with either an immediate stake in the Middle East (e.g., Israel) or an immediate past stake in the region (e.g., the United Kingdom) were the most likely to include coverage of Islam and Arab societies in secondary textbooks. The major findings of this research, however, are that content related to contemporary Islam and Arab societies in Western secondary‐level textbooks is overwhelmingly related to terrorism and terrorists, the Arab/Israeli conflict, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The majority of content related to contemporary Islam and Arab societies represents Muslims and their communities as: 1) socially, politically, and economically repressed; 2) religiously and ideologically oppressed; and 3) both typically and frequently violent.     

The Iranian Green Movement: Fragmented Collective Action and Fragile Collective Identity

The Iranian Green Movement emerged after the presidential election in June 2009. The paper tracks down its foundational origins through the concept of ‘fragmented collective action’, that points to the dispersion of a social movement's political energies and the fragmentation of its constitutive groups. It also addresses the significance of informal mobilizing networks and the widespread use of modern virtual space to bring together an intersubjectively constructed collective identity which was shaped by the movement’s interactions with political forces and with its interlocutors. Finally, the paper argues that the collective identity shaped the movement's strategies over the course of its evolution.     

Romanian Folklore and Literary Representations of Vampires

This article presents nineteenth-century Romanian folklore about vampire-like creatures which is analysed in reference to two literary representations of the vampire Dracula. I argue that the folklore tradition establishes a body-oriented perspective, conducive to a feminist analysis of the role of vampire creatures in socializing the otherness of nature echoed in the sexualized powerful female body. The perspective emerging from the folkloric material is subversive in relation to the social and sexual controls enabled across the axes of gender and class by the use of vampire figures in industrial urban cultures of the late nineteenth century.     

莫高窟早期净士思想表现——以北凉三窟为中心

本文主要以北凉三窟为中心,从佛教义学及禅法等方面,结合北凉涅槃思想演伸出的法身观和净土观,及北凉佛教所偏重的弥勒系信仰,并以此三窟之莲花化生、莲池世界等背景造像,来探讨敦煌早期净土思想之表现,希望能掌握隋唐以前敦煌净土思想之源流与发展脉络,以作为将来进一步研究之基础。