Crescent over Knoxville: Teaching Islam in the “Sort of South”

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Written By Open Plaza

Dr. Angela Tarango and Dr. Manuela Ceballos discuss pedagogy

Illustration: Emily Lin

Illustration: Emily Lin

 
 

In this episode of HTI Open Plaza, Dr. Angela Tarango and Dr. Manuela Ceballos discuss what it's like to teach Islam in Tennessee. What challenges does a Colombian-born professor Dr. Ceballos face when teaching Islam to military veteran students at a state university in the South? How are certain religious sounds racialized and, as in the case of call to prayer, what negative consequences can this have on Muslims in the United States?

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Angela Tarango

Dr. Angela Tarango is Associate Professor of Religion at Trinity University (TX). Her first book is Choosing the Jesus Way: American Indian Pentecostals and the Fight for the Indigenous Principle (University of North Carolina Press, 2014). She is currently writing a book on material religion and Latino Methodism at San Antonio’s La Trinidad United Methodist Church.

 
 
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Manuela Ceballos

Dr. Manuela Ceballos is a native of Medellín, Colombia, and studies Islamic and Christian mystical literature in the medieval and early modern Western Mediterranean. She completed her dissertation at Emory University in 2016. She has published articles on mysticism and violence, the historiographical concept of convivencia (the coexistence of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Islamic Spain), and has a forthcoming article on the hagiographical account of a sixteenth-century Muslim saint of Christian and Jewish ancestry. She regularly teaches "Introduction to the Study of Islam," and other courses that focus on literature, history, and culture in the Muslim West. Before focusing on the study of Islam, Dr. Ceballos earned a BA in French and Comparative Literature and an MA in French from Bryn Mawr College and worked as an English as a Second Language instructor for refugees in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

 
 
 
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