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Using Case Studies to Teach Religion and Sports

October 27, 2016

by Rebecca T. Alpert, Temple University

Introduction

When teaching Religion and Sports, I use case studies to give students the experience of approaching the subject through an academic lens of analysis with an emphasis on active learning. To challenge the centrality of American football in religion and sport, I choose cases from a wide variety of religious traditions, geographic locations, and sports. They are all drawn from real events and conflicts.

A case from the 2012 Olympics illustrates the value of this strategy. It’s the story of Wojdan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, the Saudi judoka who was the first woman from that country to compete in the Olympics. Her religious commitments required that she compete wearing hijab; something that the International Judo Federation had never contemplated. Through this case we examine the connections between Islamic values of modesty and gender segregation as they apply to women’s participation in Olympic sports.

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Yoga in Theory and Practice: Pedagogical Strategies

October 27, 2016

by Patton Burchett, College of William and Mary

Introduction

Each year I teach a course entitled Yoga and Tantra that traces the historical developments of traditions of Yoga and Hindu Tantra in South Asia while also looking at modern understandings and practices of Yoga and Tantra in the West. In the class, we examine contemporary debates surrounding modern-day conceptions of Yoga and Tantra, while also investigating the origins of these traditions and how they came to be thought of and practiced in the way they are today. In this article I want to focus specifically on a pedagogical strategy I have found useful in teaching students about the diverse historical tradition of yoga.

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Sensing the Gods: Utilizing Embodied Pedagogy to Understand Hindu Devotion

October 27, 2016

by Katherine C. Zubko, University of North Carolina–Asheville

Embodied Knowledge and Academic Institutions

Teaching about Hinduism in North American contexts raises particular challenges, especially in classrooms with students who view concepts of religion through predominantly Christian categories. As Narayanan (2000) and Bauman and Saunders (2009) discuss, two of these challenges include the privileging of text/scripture over embodied ritual and presuming a monotheistic framework that resists a multiplicity of gods and the corresponding variety of devotional relationships, some of which are viewed as uncomfortably intimate. Our own academic training often perpetuates these assumptions about what counts as religion, informing not only our research methods but also approaches to teaching.

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Resources

October 27, 2016

 

Bain, Ken. 2004. What the Best College Teachers Do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.  

Barkley, Elizabeth. F., Claire H. Major, K. Patricia Cross. 2005. Collaborative Learning Techniques: A Handbook for College Faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bauman, Chad and Jennifer Saunders. 2009. “Out of India: Immigrant Hindus and South Asian Hinduism in the USA.” Religion Compass 3, no. 1: 116–135.

Bean, John C. 2001. Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bell, Catherine, ed. 2007.  Teaching Ritual. New York: Oxford University Press.

Brookfield, Stephen D. 2012. Teaching for Critical Thinking: Tools and Techniques to Help Students Question Their Assumptions. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

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Yes, Your E-mails to Congress Matter: A Message from the National Humanities Alliance

October 18, 2016

by Robert Bowen, Governmental Affairs Associate, National Humanities Alliance

United States Capitol in Washington, DC

We have all become familiar with urgent requests in our inboxes and social media feeds to write our Members of Congress about an important issue. With a few clicks, these “action alerts” promise, we can influence our Senators and Representatives. Once we enter our zip code, we see a form letter replete with policy details and a specific request. We have the option to tailor the letter, but we can also simply hit “submit.”

Like other advocacy organizations, the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) issues action alerts to our network of advocates. Most often, we ask our advocates to communicate support for funding increases—or opposition to cuts—for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Title VI, or Fulbright-Hays.

While advocacy software has made political advocacy exceedingly convenient, you may wonder if these letters actually matter. The short answer is yes, they do. Constituent letters are very effective when used as one element of a larger strategy.

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Jacob Neusner (1932–2016), Prolific Author and President of the AAR in 1969

October 11, 2016

by Aaron Hughes, University of Rochester

Jacob Neusner was born to Samuel and Lee Neusner on July 12, 1932, in West Hartford, Connecticut. His father owned the Connecticut Jewish Ledger, a Jewish weekly that continues to serve the Connecticut region and western Massachusetts. The young Neusner received his first typewriter at age twelve and, by his junior year in high school, could do all the jobs associated with a newspaper. From a young age he could write both quickly and to make deadlines. Neusner grew up attending public school as opposed to Jewish day school, and his values largely reflected those of other assimilated and suburban Jews who came of age in 1940s and 1950s America. But whereas many of them ended up in law or medical school, Neusner realized, from a young age, that he wanted to be a rabbi—though he admitted later to me that he had no idea at the time what that meant, I suspect it was to lead a life immersed in the Jewish texts that he had yet to encounter.

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Letting Go of Our Children: Taking My Son to College

October 10, 2016

by Grace Ji-Sun Kim, Earlham School of Religion

Working moms and stay-at-home moms have a tough life. Whether we work or stay at home as we raise our children, we will come to an inevitable point in our lives when we have to “let go” of our children and allow them to grow and become adults. Whether dropping them off at college or sending them off to the army or other major events, we must face the reality that they are leaving the “nest.” For some of us this will be a great time of joy, but for others, it will be a time of loss, adjustment, and big change.

For women who are professors, there is the added stress of how to manage your children while trying to maneuver through the academy. There is a growing amount of literature out there to help professorial moms navigate the academy so that they can be successful professors in their own respective areas.

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An Interview with Joanne Maguire Robinson, the 2016 AAR Excellence in Teaching Award Winner

October 4, 2016

The Teaching and Learning Committee is pleased to announce Joanne Maguire Robinson is the recipient of the 2016 Excellence in Teaching Award. Robinson is Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. Robinson will make remarks and engage questions and answers during the Special Topics Forum at this year's Annual Meeting in San Antonio, TX. (Editor's note: Nominations for the 2017 Excellence in Teaching Awards are welcome through October 15, 2016.)

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Avoiding Gender Bias in Reference Writing, from the University of Arizona's Commission on the Status of Women

September 30, 2016
 
With the AAR's Annual Meeting fast approaching—a time when hundreds of candidates flock to a set of first-round interviews for positions in religious studies and theology departments across the country—we were thankful to receive this flyer from the University of Arizona's Commission on the Status of Women as a reminder to applicants, letter writers, and letter readers, about identifying and avoiding gender bias in letters of recommendation. Click the image for a larger version to print and share.


 

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Work-Life Balance or Proportion: What’s In a Word?

September 28, 2016

by Maria Liu Wong, City Seminary of New York

Henri Matisse's "Tea in the Garden" (1919)

“Work-life balance” is a tenuous phrase. Is it possible to imagine that there can ever be real balance, or is it something we might think of instead as a “work-life proportion” in a particular season of time? A mother of three young children ages 2 years to 9 years, working full-time as an administrator and faculty in a seminary, and having spent the past three years of my life working on a dissertation on women and leadership in theological education, this notion of “work-life balance” has been on my mind A LOT. In a recent conversation with my pastor—a very busy man himself who spent a season of his life as primary caretaker for his sons while his wife was working the day shift—I was challenged me to think beyond the idea of “work-life balance,” but more in terms of proportions of time spent doing one thing versus the other.

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