May 03 2024

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan: 2017 Marty Award Winner

November 6, 2017

by Mara Willard, AAR Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion

headshot of Winnifred Sullivan with a case of books behind her

The AAR’s Committee on the Public Understanding of Religion is pleased to announce that Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, professor in the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University Bloomington and affiliated professor at the Bloomington Maurer School of Law, is the 2017 recipient of the Martin E. Marty Award for the Public Understanding of Religion.

Now in its twenty-first year, the Marty Award recognizes extraordinary contributions to the public understanding of religion by individuals whose work has a relevance and eloquence that speaks not just to scholars, but to other “publics” as well.

Read more

Teaching the Paranormal and the Occult: Editor’s Introduction

October 23, 2017

by Fred Glennon, Le Moyne College

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

Walk into a classroom early and you might overhear students talking about such television shows as The Walking Dead, Ghosthunters, or Haunted Case Files; or the latest horror film like Ouija: Origin of Evil. Such paranormal pop culture is so prevalent these days that there is a website whose mission is “dedicated to covering all of paranormal culture in mass media.” While the website does not endorse claims about the paranormal, it does reflect the widespread interest in the paranormal among the population. Personally, I love the films that deal with ghosts and demons, as do many of my students. They are intrigued, if not a little bit spooked, by the genre. They want to believe that there are mystical experiences and forces that transcend the routine in everyday life. I share their interest.

Read more

Religious Education and the Paranormal: Reflections of Discussing Anomalous Experiences in the Classrooms

October 23, 2017

by Jack Hunter, University of Bristol

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

Introduction

Read more

Reflecting on the Occult: Nurturing “Critical Being” through Exposure to Marginal or Controversial Ideas

October 23, 2017

by Madeleine Castro, Leeds Beckett University

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

What’s Important about the Occult for Critical Thinking?

“Critical thinking” is a bit of a hornet’s nest. Scholars do not agree on how to define it and at times it has been (problematically) upheld as a distinctly Western phenomenon. There are also disagreements about how it can best be taught or demonstrated to students. This centres on whether it can be directly taught as a skill (the preferred option within the literature) or whether it can successfully be embedded within the substantive educational experience. I would argue that “critical being” (Barnett 1997) is the cornerstone of higher education. “Critical persons are more than just critical thinkers. They are able critically to engage with the world and with themselves as well as with knowledge” (1). This fundamental “state” can be actively encouraged in teaching on the occult or paranormal phenomena.

Read more

Haunting the Religious Studies Classroom

October 23, 2017

by Richard J. Callahan, Jr., University of Missouri

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

From Ghosts to Haunting

Read more

Teaching Demonology, Possession, and Exorcism in Texas

October 23, 2017

by Joseph Laycock, Texas State University

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

Introduction

I am an assistant professor of religious studies at Texas State, a rapidly growing state university in San Marcos, Texas. Texas State offers a minor in religious studies and is currently creating a major. I was hired to help build the new major and generate student interest in religious studies. Specifically, I was encouraged to teach a class through the Texas State Honors College that would “get butts in seats” and show why religious studies is a fascinating field. I had just finished editing an encyclopedia called Spirit Possession around the World for ABC-CLIO and this seemed like the perfect basis for a high-interest  course. So I designed a course called “Demonology, Possession, and Exorcism” that was offered in the fall of 2015. The course was popular enough that the Honor’s College asked me to teach it again in the spring of 2017.

Read more

Experiencing Occult/Paranormal/Spiritual Phenomena in the Classroom

October 23, 2017

by Charles F. Emmons, Gettysburg College

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

Experience as a Way of Knowing

In both my “Sociology of Religion” class and my “Science, Knowledge, and the New Age” class, there are treatments of such occult, paranormal, and/or spiritual topics as spirit mediumship, ESP, apparitions, and spiritual healing. Especially in the latter class, the emphasis is on the sociology of knowledge, or ways of knowing. The main course objective is to understand both scientific and “intuitive” (broadly defined) ways of knowing and to compare and to see interconnections between the two.

Read more

Teaching and Learning from the Uncertainties of Occult Phenomena

October 23, 2017

by Darryl Caterine, Le Moyne College

Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

The Séance as a Teaching Event

Read more

Resources

October 23, 2017
Black and white photograph of 2 men and 3 women around a table, each with one hand on top of it. A spectre of a hand arises from the floor toward the bottom of the table.

Astin, Alexander W., Helen S. Astin, and Jennifer A. Lindholm. 2011. Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students’ Inner Lives. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Armstrong, Thomas. 1984. “Transpersonal Experience in Childhood.” Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 16, no. 2: 207–230.

Aronowitz, Stanley. 1988. Science as Power: Discourse and ideology in Modern Society. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Bader, Christopher David, Frederick Carson Mencken, and Joe Baker. 2010. Paranormal America: Ghost Encounters, UFO Sightings, Bigfoot Hunts, and Other Curiosities in Religion and Culture. New York: New York University Press.

Barnett, Ronald. 1997. Higher Education: A Critical Business. Buckingham: SRHE/Open University Press.

Belenky, Mary Field, Blythe Mcvicker Clinchy, Nancy Rule Goldberger, and Jill Mattuck Tarule. 1986. Women's Ways of Knowing. New York: Basic Books.

Read more

Aaron Hughes's "Jacob Neusner: An American Jewish Iconoclast" and the Man I Knew

October 4, 2017

by David R. Blumenthal, Emory University

Jacob Neusner and I grew up on opposite sides of the tracks. Neusner was, as Aaron Hughes has shown in his very good biography, born into a marginally Reform Jewish family, had no formal Jewish education, no supportive Jewish youth group, and no Zionist orientation. He was an outsider to the community of Jews who are consciously committed to, and actively participant in, their community. I came from the opposite background. My father, Rabbi Aaron Blumenthal, was one of the leaders of the Conservative Movement: a founding member of the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, author of the responsum permitting women to be called to the Torah, president of the Rabbinical Assembly, and winner of an adult education award at his synagogue.

Read more

Pages