Counterpoints

Issues in Teaching in Religious Studies

The editors would like to express their appreciation to the following faculty, students, and individuals for their contributions and permission to use their work:

Mark A. Berkson
Andrew Flescher
David Ross Fryer
Mark Gonnerman
S. Nomanul Haq
Jung Lee
J. Giles Milhaven
Louis E. Newman
Aaron Stalnaker
Sumner B. Twiss
Megumi Unno
Donna M. Wulff

Special thanks are due to the Departmental Chair, Sumner B. Twiss, for his encouragement of this project and to the Gammino Instructional Fund Faculty Grant without which it would not have been possible to complete this volume.

We would also like to thank the authors and publishers for permission to use the following:
The Center for Teaching and Learning, for an excerpt from TA Talk, vol. 3/2 (spring 1992)
The Association of American Colleges and Universities, for Louis E. Newman, "Being Myself, a Teacher," in Liberal Education, ed. by Bridget Puzon, vol. 80/4 (1994).

© 1995 by Mark Hadley and Mark Unno, Department of Religious Studies,
Brown University

This set of essays is an experimental venture that can be read on a variety of levels: pedagogical, epistemological, methodological, and historical. From the standpoint of pedagogy, the most overt level, the essays explore in a reflective and creative manner some of the most important practical issues faced by both beginning and more experienced teachers in the field of religious studies: for example, what to teach, how to teach, the meaning of education, the role of the teacher. As one progresses through the essays, however, the reader also becomes quickly aware that the manner in which these pedagogical issues are addressed are shaped by deeper considerations of theory and method in the field of religious studies: the nature of religion and its relationship to human experience, ethics, and politics; the issue of what constitutes knowledge in the field and its relationship to understandings of canon, authority, and consensus in scholarship; methods of inquiry and how these relate to issues of interpretation, comparison, and fundamental human values. The historical dimension of the essays is revealed not only through explicit references to diachronic developments in courses and curriculum but also, and more subtly, in the way that discussions of pedagogy draw on past and contemporary paradigms for approaching and understanding religious and human experience in the broadest sense.

As a result of working through the essays in these various and interacting levels, the reader should come away with a rich appreciation of the challenges faced by teachers in religious studies as well as the humanities more generally. Moreover, it will not go unnoticed that, according to our authors, effectively addressing these challenges evokes in both teachers and students alike our deepest moral and intellectual capacities, ranging across respect for the other, empathetic appreciation of the different, self-critical assessment of basic assumptions and values, and a liberality of heart and mind. These capacities, suggest our authors, are essential not only to teaching and learning in a university setting but also to dealing effectively and creatively with the problems and prospects of the contemporary world. True education is, in a phrase, education for life.

As Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, I wish to thank the editors, Mark Hadley and Mark Unno, for their vision and labor in producing this volume. I also wish to thank the contributors for their deeply thoughtful and affective probings of our basic commitments and values as teachers in the field. Last, but not least, I wish to acknowledge the Gammino Fund's faculty grant to Mark Unno for the financial support of this collaborative project.

Sumner B. Twiss
Professor of Religious Studies Brown University
August 9, 1995

Background

In the fall of 1994 I had just arrived at Brown as a Mellon Fellow, and I knew that I had come to an institution known for its emphasis on undergraduate education and innovative curriculum long before conscious reflection and programming in these areas had become a central concern at many other universities. Discussion and debate involving issues of curriculum and pedagogy had become particularly energized since a group of students led by Ira Magaziner wrote the Draft of a Working Paper for Education at Brown University,[1] and Brown has long attracted both faculty and students who are committed to undergraduate education as a vital, creative process wherein each individual is responsible for charting her or his own path in conversation with others as much as making use of established frameworks.
I had coedited a volume on pedagogy in religious studies with a colleague, Mark Gonnerman, at Stanford University the previous fall. Since then my ideas had evolved, and I had looked forward to exploring several issues upon my arrival at Brown. The idea for this volume arose in early September of 1994 during a conversation concerning some of these issues between Sumner B. Twiss, the Department Chair of Religious Studies at Brown, and myself.

We could envision many benefits of putting together a volume of essays in the department. Although there were occasions for discussing pedagogical issues, the attempt to formulate ideas on paper would serve as a catalyst for the process of reflection. Faculty and graduate students would read about each others thoughts on the subject, creating a concrete forum for conversation. First-time TAs and instructors would have a ready resource for topics ranging from the practical problem of what to do on the first day of class to complex theoretical issues. The volume could be distributed to members of other departments and institutions for various kinds of interaction and feedback. As the coeditor along with Mark Hadley, the process of working through the volume would give me an ideal opportunity to get to know and learn from the members of the department, both faculty and students, as teachers and potential teachers. I am happy and grateful to report that this volume has already fulfilled the last of these expectations, and it is my hope that the others will also be met.

Contributions were solicited from the faculty and students in the department, the subject of their essays being left entirely up to individual discretion. Although there was thus no systematic plan to cover a specific range of issues or focus on a particular theme, several of the authors composed their essays in conversation with one another, and the editors have worked to organize them so as to highlight their organic connections. As noted by Twiss in the preface, many of these essays go beyond procedural and even theoretical issues specific to pedagogy and delve into broader intellectual and moral concerns. In order to address more practical concerns, such as pedagogical technique and creating a teaching portfolio, five pieces from the Stanford volume have been included, many of them revised and updated. Two other essays by those with ties to Brown and Stanford Universities have also been included, one by Louis Newman, Professor of Judaic Studies in the Department of Religion at Carleton College who received his Ph.D. from Brown, the other by Mark Berkson, Ph.D. candidate in early Chinese thought and comparative religious ethics in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford.

Essays

Numbering sixteen in all excluding the preface and introduction, the essays have been organized into four parts.

Part I, Practical Issues for TAs and Instructors, addresses concrete concerns of procedure and technique, but these often extend into deeper issues. In his "Advice to First-Time TAs," Mark Gonnerman begins by outlining techniques for beginning, organizing, and efficiently leading discussion sections. He goes on to describe the qualities of an effective teacher, such as imagination, preparedness, and flexibility. Throughout there is an emphasis on the importance of working with the students and the situation, learning as one goes as well as looking to established resources.

In "Pedagogical Tools and Strategies" I continue the discussion of resources available to beginning teachers by covering some techniques that I have used, such as short weekly assignments, student presentations, formal debate, peer review, handouts, and working with other TAs and instructors.

In the third essay, I introduce a set of "Paper Writing Guidelines" that I regularly hand out to my students. These serve to communicate expectations regarding everything from deadlines and mechanics to types of papers. I have found that the guidelines have helped to increase the overall quality of students' writing by making the process of providing feedback and evaluating students' work clearer and more efficient.

This is followed by a brief essay originally written by Megumi Unno on the creative dimensions of composing the undergraduate paper, "Writing: The Bridge between Consciousness and Unconsciousness," adapted for this volume.

In "Creating a Teaching Portfolio," Mark Gonnerman describes the kinds of things that might be included in a teaching dossier submitted as part of one's application for academic employment, including student recommendations, sample student papers, and course evaluations.

Part II, Historical Context and Diverse Understandings, begins with Twiss's "Shaping the Curriculum: The Emergence of Religious Studies," a historical account of curricular developments in the field of religious studies in general and in the department at Brown in particular. He traces a trajectory from an "explicitly theological or mutedly ethnocentric" approach to "the critical study of the world's religious traditions" and onto the current "Post Modern Hermeneutical" phase in which religious phenomena are understood in terms of their "context-dependent rationality and the historical and social location of all human endeavors." In doing so he delineates the relationship between research and pedagogy and the significance of religious studies in the larger university curriculum.

In the second essay, S. Nomanul Haq provides "Some Reflections on the Pedagogical Challenges of Introductory Courses on Islam." He highlights the difficulties and challenges that are particularly prominent in dealing with Islam as an academic subject, especially given the images projected by the media. At the same time, his essay serves as a case study for many of the issues reviewed in Twiss's piece, for the challenges Haq describes exist in lesser or modified form in teaching other areas in religious studies. He places particular importance on considering the background of students taking such courses and the possible "psychological dislocation" faced by some.

Part III, Textual Representation and Representation of Text, continues much of the discussion initiated in Part II concerning the importance of contextual understanding and problems of method as they relate to deeper theoretical concerns facing the field of religious studies as a whole. The essays in this section, however, focus more on the significance of texts-their various uses and the role of the teacher who mediates their understanding.

In "Reflection on/through Comparison," Mark Berkson explores the pedagogical import of comparative study and its ability to engender normative self-reflection on the part of the students. He weighs the balance between critical methods of inquiry and the choice of texts, or issues of canonicity. This leads to a consideration of the cultural and religious other, the problem of avoiding the extremes of domestication and exoticization, and the use of analogical imagination to engage texts meaningfully.

In the "Teacher as Authority and Mediator," Andrew Flescher analyzes the tension between the need for an open approach which allows freedom of interpretation and the task of inculcating analytical skills for discerning the normative significance of better and worse readings. Like Berkson, Flescher is concerned with the failure to incite self-reflection, and he recounts episodes that provide glimpses into how as teachers we can learn to aid this process.

Aaron Stalnaker similarly addresses the problem of diverse understandings and normative engagement; he suggests how "Kierkegaard's Strategy of Indirect Communication" can aid "the Teaching of Religious Ethics." Specifically, he draws on the notion of reduplication to show how texts can be used to simultaneously establish the necessary critical distance between teacher and student as well as to stimulate self-critical thinking. The combination of the two leads pedagogically to a model in which textual ideas are considered as "real possibilities."

In "Four Modes of Knowledge and the Representation of Text," I consider the intellectual, intuitive, affective, and somatic modes as related but distinct ways of appropriating knowledge relevant to the pedagogical use of texts in religious studies. The engagement of different modalities in various pedagogical contexts is examined, as well as the relationship between these modalities, their appropriation by the teacher, and their relevance for comparing texts and bringing them into conversation with one another.

Part IV, Professional Method and Personal Engagement, presents a set of essays that further examine issues of subjective engagement and objective, theoretical understanding in terms of the personal and experiential dimensions of teaching and learning.

Louis Newman in "Being Myself, a Teacher" discusses the manner in which he underwent "a shift in orientation" whereby he came to "view teaching as an interpersonal relationship, more than a professional one." This means not that he emphasizes the former at the expense of the latter; quite to the contrary, he finds that understanding the personal dimension at work in both teacher and student enables him to perform his professional duties in a more effective and complete manner.

J. Giles Milhaven in "Teaching, Learning, and Feeling" likewise emphasizes the importance of the personal in pedagogy, in particular the role of feeling. At one level, he finds the passion for learning to be an integral component of meaningful education. At another, he finds a feel for the truth indispensable in grappling with moral and religious questions. Finally, he finds passion indispensable for coming to know the human beings who live out these questions, for in doing so they are inevitably informed by their passions.

In "An Exercise in Learning," Donna Wulff suggests a different use of personal experience in the classroom. In contrast to Milhaven's appeal to students' own experiences of passion and passionate learning, Wulff suggests moving out into the world of experience through the use of debates, listening to musical performances, and dramatization. These strategies, she finds, are effective in bringing academic questions to life as well as bringing home the power of ideas.

In "The Politics of Experience and the Experience of Politics, or How to be a Poststructuralist in the Classroom," David Fryer frames the classroom use of personal experience in ideological and political context. Drawing on poststructuralist psychoanalytic feminist theory, he examines the possible pitfalls of appeals to personal experience which can lead to epistemological naivete and even create barriers to authentic engagement and meaningful conversation. He does not deny the power of the personal which he sees as essential to profound learning, but he cautions against the misuse of personal power in both teachers and students. For his insightful analysis, examination of multiple perspectives, and sophisticated use of theory, Fryer was judged the winner of The Student Essay Competition on Teaching in Religious Studies 1994-1995 held in the Department of Religious Studies, Brown University.

In "Pedagogical Authenticity: Teaching as Identification," Jung Lee advocates a pedagogical approach that emphasizes cooperation and identification with one's students. In so doing Lee touches on many of the concerns reflected in this volume: the balance between the teacher as hierarchical authority and as equal interlocutor, the need for mutual receptivity between teacher and student, the importance of humility based on the awareness of incomplete knowledge, and the exercise of imaginative understanding.

Reflections

As academics we spend much of our lives in the classroom, but for the majority of us the preponderance of our formal graduate training was devoted to research. Learning about teaching is, nevertheless, as involved and multifaceted as the process of acquiring research skills. Lecturing, working with students on their writing, and leading them in discussion while balancing critical distance and normative engagement, professional method and personal concern-these are just a few of the areas that present complex challenges and require the full exercise of our imagination, intellectual and moral virtues, willingness to experiment and learn from mistakes, and responsiveness to ever-changing conditions in the classroom, curriculum, and cultural climate. At a time when these challenges are becoming ever greater, it has been gratifying to see that both faculty and graduate students at an institution like Brown are dedicated to pedagogy as an integral component of their work and training.

As I reflect on the process of teaching, I can see that I have learned much through conversation with teachers, colleagues, and through reading the growing literature on pedagogy in religious studies. Above all, however, I am continually amazed by what I learn from students who almost daily open up for me new vistas, providing me with unending questions and delight in this life of unexpected rewards. It is my sense that a similar enthusiasm infects the work of those who have contributed to this volume, and I only hope that the students with whom we work will benefit from our thinking about teaching, for it is to them that we owe our sustenance in more ways than one.

[1] For an account of the history of this document and the curriculum at Brown, see Janet Phillips, "Carpe Diem-Twenty-Five Years of (R)evolution," Brown Alumni Monthly (March 1995), 18-25.