Elvis is titanic
Subtitle: classroom tales from the other Iraq
By: Ian Klaus
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 2007
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 240
ISBN-13: 9780307267788; 9780307276896
Subjects: Higher Education; Foreign Teachers; College teachers; Politics and government; Iraq War, 2003-2011; EDUCATION; Essays; Organizations & Institutions; Reference
Description: In the spring of 2005, 26-year-old Ian Klaus arrived at Salahaddin University in Arbil, the largest city in Iraqi Kurdistan. This is the poignant, funny, and eye-opening story of the semester he spent there teaching U.S. history and English in the thick of the war for hearts and minds. Inspired by the volunteerism of so many young Americans after 9/11, Klaus exchanges the abstraction of duty for an intimate involvement with individual lives. Among the Kurds, a perennially oppressed but seemingly indomitable people, he encounters both openhearted welcome and resentful suspicion--and soon learns firsthand how far even a trusted stranger can venture in this society. With assignments ranging from Elvis to Ellington, from baseball to Tocqueville, Klaus strives to illuminate the American way for charges initially far more attuned to our pop culture than our national ideals--and begins his own reexamination of truths we hold to be self-evident.--From publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-240).
Table of contents: title: Beyond war; title: How and why : feet on the ground, head in the sky; title: The first day of class : history in the present; title: Election day in a country within a country; title: English I: travel, globalization, and Hollywood; title: The Hemingway lectures; title: Spring break in the Sheraton : a country comes to the hotel; title: History II: "Sitting in judgment"; title: can a nation move forward?; title: English II: Putting out fires; title: America, democracy, Islam, and the future; title: Battles in the universities; title: English III: Finals; title: the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?; title: The National Enquirer writes; and Ali finally calls back; title: History III: "Our flowers grew up by our youth blood for getting freedom."