The 21^st-century has seen a rapid expansion of interest in contemplative pedagogy across institutions of higher education, not to mention K-12 education. Even as contemplative pedagogy can be found everywhere from courses on law to language, it has a more complex relationship with religious studies. Although the fiction of pure objectivity has receded in intellectual inquiry more broadly, many religious studies departments defend themselves from critics on all sides by presenting themselves as engaged in the “scientific study of religion” (religionswissenschaft). Promoting contemplative practice in the classroom can risk crossing the line into proselytizing, as well as into the culturally imperialist decontextualization and appropriation of others’ traditions, leaving some religious studies scholars wary of first-person approaches to learning that are based on practices associated with particular religions.

“I no longer read for fun.” “I can’t enjoy movies anymore.” “Reading a menu at a restaurant, I start analyzing its rhetoric and can’t think about what to order.” These and similar comments from students across the humanities got me thinking: Students are—even unintentionally—applying critical-reading skills that we practice within courses to life beyond class. But are those skills enough? Are they helping students to flourish as humans? In order to complement critical thinking, about a decade ago, I started incorporating a different set of practices into my courses, drawn from contemplative traditions and the then-emerging field of contemplative pedagogy.

I understand “contemplative pedagogy” within the practical and philosophical contexts we have developed at Brown in our novel undergraduate concentration (major) in contemplative studies, which began in 2014 and has graduated twenty-seven students. Nonetheless, even if you don’t have a program like that at your home institution, we think the methods we have developed are broadly applicable. I will begin by setting up our context.