At my university we have a junior-level interdisciplinary seminar, which can be on any topic a professor wants to teach about. I have taught versions about places -- Istanbul, Cairo, London, and this semester, the Silk Road; I prepared a proposal for one on Jerusalem/Al Quds. which a colleague has taught several times. I have also taught a Gender and Culture class on Women of the Middle East.
These are fun to teach as they do not lead into anything, do not count for many majors, and if you get the right students it can be a great group of people. I happened to be teaching the class on Cairo during the semester of the Arab spring, a class which happened to have two Middle East Studies majors in it, and we spent a lot of time following the news and discussing current happenings. We were meeting in the library classroom on the day that Mubarak resigned, and the students were almost bouncing with excitement, as we watched the celebrations in Tahrir Square as the news spread.
I really didn't want to teach that class again, as it was such a good teaching memory to hold onto, and I don't have any desire to supplant it. So I taught London the next time through, a very under-enrolled class, which was okay because every Thursday I would bring in high-quality tea if they wanted to partake (we were doing the class at 3 pm, so it really was time for tea).
This year I decided to try something to support one of the interdisciplinary minors we have on campus, in this case Asian/Asian-American studies (these classes generally don't count for majors but can for minors). Hence the course on the Silk Road.
Follow me beyond the convoluted orange silken highway for a discussion of what I think the students should get out of this class and how I am going about helping them achieve that outcome.