Mohammed Jiyad Profile

Mohammed Jiyad specializes in teaching Arabic language, literature, and culture. Since 1990, he has demonstrated his software and discussed his textbooks at international conferences. Jiyad's most recently developed software is Arabic Gemini for advanced reading. Arabic Gemini focuses on reading comprehension, based on information processing theory and foreign language schema theory. The program provides prompts to guide learners to generate plausible hypotheses about the events described in the text. It presents multimedia displays (text, graphics, sound, and video) to provide information about the various aspects in the text. The Gemini prototype was used to develop Hebrew, German, Russian, and French, along with Arabic; the project was funded by the U.S. Department of Education.

A few years ago, Jiyad began a collaborative literary analysis with Professor Mishael Caspi, a distinguished scholar from Israel, currently at Bates College. Their first book, “Eve in Three Traditions and Literatures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,” examines the exchange of ideas between early Islam and Judaism. It was published by Mellen in March 2004. Jiyad and Caspi's second book is “By the Soft Lyres: The Search for the Prophet Elijah” The book was published by Klaus Schwarz Verlag-Berlin in 2006.

In summer 2002, Jiyad was chosen as one of 15 faculty members from 81 liberal arts colleges to attend a seminar held by the National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE). This seminar led to the creation of Jiyad's literature course on Arab women. He designed the course to give a well-rounded picture of the problems still confronting women in the Arab world today and of efforts being made to achieve a fuller, more equal participation in all aspects of life.

Currently, Jiyad is working on the “The Status of Women in Arabic Literature,” a manuscript written in the 14th century by Ali Ibn Omar al-Batnuny. This is a significant work because it shows how the first “intellectual” group that surrounded the Prophet Mohammed put the first interpretations of the Quran and the Traditions of the Prophet himself. The group, which was comprised of a number of converts, made the first attempt to use literature, in this case religious, to write history.

In addition to his work on language acquisition and technological advancements in pedagogy, Jiyad has a personal passion for current events in the Middle East. He continues to appear in national and local media to address the situation in Iraq.

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Asian Studies at Mount Holyoke College
50 College Street, South Hadley, MA 01075
Telephone: 413-538-2885