The women and gender studies and religious studies departments will be offering a new course next semester. The course, Women and Islam, will be taught by instructor Layla Saatchi, also new to Oakland University.

The course was proposed to Saatchi by Paul Kubicek, a political science professor and the director of the center for international programs.

“(Kubicek) saw a need for developing upper-level courses in the Islamic studies program,” Saatchi said. “I have been teaching a combined graduate/undergraduate course on Islamic family law at Wayne State University for the past four years, so Dr. Kubicek saw an opportunity to combine my area of expertise, which is gender construction in Islamic law, with the need to develop OU’s Islamic studies minor.”

Although the actual course is new, it isn’t the first time this subject has been taught at OU.

Director of Women’s Studies Jo Reger said that Oakland has offered similar courses in the past, such as women in the middle east and contemporary U.S. women’s movement.

“This is not a new area for us,” Reger said.

According to Reger, this subject usually gets a good turnout in terms of class size, as it is a topic that some people are really interested in.

Among those interested is sophomore Sean Cannady, an international relations and German double-major. Cannady heard about the course from his Russian politics professor, Kubicek.

“This is something I actually want to learn from,” Cannady said. “I’ve tried to read a couple books about it. The role of women in Islam is one of the biggest misunderstandings between the West and Islam … There wasn’t a very strong Muslim presence where I grew up in Midland, Mich., and southeast Michigan, where we live is a particularly dense area of Muslim and Arab immigration.”

Reger, who has seen the course syllabus and met with Saatchi several times, expects that the course will be intellectually challenging, and “one excellent class.”

The course is designed for students who want a deeper understanding of Islam and Muslim women. It will expose students to productions in which Muslim women speak for themselves.

“Students will have the opportunity to gain a foundational understanding of Islam, read literature and see film productions of Muslim women, and hopefully come away with an understanding of the complexity that is women in Islam,” Saatchi said.

Saatchi hopes to have at least 15 students enrolled in the course, although only six are currently signed up.

“The class will be lecture driven, but we will also be viewing films, which I hope to be able to put on line,” Saatchi said. “I structure my lectures to include a substantial amount of class discussion, and the subject matter will naturally lend itself to open discussion. I often use power point to outline my lectures, so students will know what to expect on their exams.”

In all, Saatchi believes that this course is unique in that it presents a largely unfamiliar topic while misconceptions are so prevalent.

“The beauty of this course is that it allows women’s agency to come through and illustrates that Muslim women themselves are defining their religion for themselves,” Saatchi said.

The class is worth four credits and fulfills the general education writing intensive requirement. It will be held Tuesday nights from 6:30 to 9:50.