Angela Williams Associate Director at the The Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Interested in visiting:
Scholars in the Classroom topics:
* Middle East & South Asian Cultures
* Islam 101
* Introduction to the Arabic Language
* Middle Eastern classical and popular music
Biography
Angela’s interest in international studies began primarily through language study when she began taking Arabic as an undergraduate student at Illinois. She quickly saw that she learned language best within the context of use, and in order for the language to stick, she’d need to have some immersion experience. Angela lived and studied in Cairo, Egypt, for a year. Her best memories of that time are of students and other people she met on a daily basis who helped her find her way around and took delight in her efforts to learn their language. She has also visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Lebanon, Oman and Turkey. Angela is interested in how popular culture impacts knowledge about ourselves and others. She is writing her dissertation on female rappers from Arab countries and Iran. She likes to sing with people and play the guitar, piano, and is trying to teach herself banjo when not working on her PhD dissertation.
Topics Description
Angela has talked about holidays to an elementary class and done a variety of story times and art activities including tile painting, lamp painting, writing names in Arabic, Eid cards, etc. She has done some short Arabic sessions and spoken to high school classes about music in the Middle East (classical and popular); She has also explained the basic tenets of Islam to students. Most of what Angela is interested in working on today is online music and content, or images or other online artworks, videos that tell about people’s experiences in the regions and depart from usual narratives.