Instructors’ Teaching Experience

I taught this book in the Fall of 2010, and it demanded engagement from my students who were unfamiliar with the situation of Pakistan (or where it was on a map, for that matter). This caused a couple of interesting situations to develop, as many of my students were unwilling to take the necessary time to understand the text, while others really found it fascinating and wanted to learn more about it. My international students in particular really seemed to enjoy the book, while many of my American students were less than excited about keeping track of names they were unfamiliar with and following the admittedly complex familial inter-relationships. That said, I think this was a useful exercise even for my students who did not enjoy the book specifically. [Jacob Horn, jacob-horn@uiowa.edu]

Classroom Strategies

This is a great chance to ask students to research some about the book’s context and share their findings with the class. I would recommend doing this before you even begin to talk about the book as a whole, and to set things up with small groups that research the Partition of India, Operation Searchlight, the Bangladeshi Liberation War, and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971. Small presentations and handouts could be made, and you could either do big group presentations or small groups where each member of a group must focus on one aspect of this situation. I tried to fit this information into a regular class reading time, and it was too much. This could be easily paired with a discussion of major historical impacts on American life (and your students specifically) and a handout that sketches the various relationships in Kartography for your students. [Jacob Horn, jacob-horn@uiowa.edu]