Elvis is titanic : classroom tales from the other Iraq / Ian Klaus.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Klaus, Ian, 1978-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Education, Higher--Iraq--Kurdistān.

Education, Higher.

Teachers, Foreign--Iraq--Kurdistān.

Teachers, Foreign.

College teachers--United States.

College teachers.

United States.

Kurdistan--Politics and government--21st century.

Kurdistan.

Iraq War, 2003-2011.

Iraq--Kurdistān.

Physical Description:

240 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2007.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Beyond war

How and why : feet on the ground, head in the sky

The first day of class : history in the present

Election day in a country within a country

English I: travel, globalization, and Hollywood

The Hemingway lectures

Spring break in the Sheraton : a country comes to the hotel

History II: "Sitting in judgment"

can a nation move forward?

English II: Putting out fires

America, democracy, Islam, and the future

Battles in the universities

English III: Finals

the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?

The National Enquirer writes; and Ali finally calls back

History III: "Our flowers grew up by our youth blood for getting freedom".

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-240).

ISBN:

9780307264565

0307264564

OCLC:

85484932