In this article we address the affective dimensions and challenges of teaching about Islam and Islamic studies in the current American political and cultural environment and make two related arguments. First, we explain how the impact of certain kinds of digital media in the past few years has heightened the association of Islam with violence in the minds of many Americans, leading to a classroom affective environment characterized by the "posttraumatic" experience of knowledge about Islam. Second, we argue that the pedagogical use of digital media as a tool for ethnographic and empathic engagement with individual Muslim lives can help meet this particular teaching challenge. We show how the pedagogical employment of digital ethnography can turn the affective power of digital media into a positive learning tool, and model its responsible social and intellectual use.

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In the context of a global pandemic, techniques for remote instruction have become increasingly vital to undergraduate instruction. This essay discusses how synchronous virtual encounters can have a similar pedagogical impact as inperson encounters by outlining specific methods of intercultural learning via Virtual Exchange Pedagogy (VEP), in which students in different locations interact with one another through structured online activities. This essay shares techniques used prior to the pandemic to connect undergraduate students in the American south to students in an urban setting in Egypt. VEP can facilitate successful intercultural learning by enabling students to share and discover the deep emotional narratives that structure their view of self and others, assisting participants to achieve empathic understanding between our students and their interlocutors, even while separated by great physical distances and never able to meet physically in person.

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