Lisa Ohm Awarded Faculty Development Grant to Explore Islam in Oman

German Professor Lisa Ohm speaks of her research interests in Islam:  "The Turkish community in Berlin is the largest outside of the country of Turkey itself! Germany, too, is learning how to live with Islam and other minority cultures. One of our graduating seniors, David Lambert, did his senior project on the “Kaza,” the Islamic community that exists at the margins of the German majority community. In many of my seminars, I talk with students about the situation of women in Islam. This semester students in Germ 311 read parts of Necla Kelek’s book, Die fremde Braut (The Foreign Bride). Kelek was born in Turkey but got her Ph.D. in Germany, thus becoming one of the few highly educated Turkish women in Germany. She conducted hundreds of interviews with brides imported into Germany from Turkey, most of whom are 16-17 years old. One of her many suggestions for improving the situation is to raise the legal age for marriage of such imported brides.  I have also used French sources (Ben Jelloun), because France, too, has a large Islamic population. I also include selections from Goethe's West-östlicher Divan in GERM 341. This work shows Goethe's deep appreciation of Persian culture and of the Islamic poet Hafiz to whom the work is dedicated. Most students enjoy Goethe’s poetry but the Divan opened up their thinking to an entirely new view of the world, of being in the world, and of religious fervor. Noreen Herzfeld gave a talk on Islam and Hafiz in the course which was very enlightening for the students.  I plan to offer a course on International Feminism which fulfills the course description for GWST 381 - Sex and Gender in Global Perspectives (4). Women in Islam would constitute an important segment of the course."