Courses on religion and the environment must confront racism and white privilege in order to remain relevant for the diverse students who increasingly fill higher education classrooms. Recognizing that traditional approaches for understanding environmentalism can isolate students of color by failing to recognize their own communities and…

Contingent teaching has become the norm in most institutions. While the use of adjuncts and other non-tenure track professors shows no sign of slowing down, the nature of contingent teaching is less known. This article examines how contingent teaching directly impacts the professor's teaching. My experience teaching religious studies courses from…

A panel at the 2016 American Academy of Religion conference staged, taped, transcribed, and edited this conversation about the challenges and opportunities of teaching in a "nano department"--an undergraduate religion or religious studies department (or combined religion and philosophy department) with only one, two, or three faculty…

In this article, I explore an ethical and pedagogical dilemma that I encounter each semester in my world religions courses: namely, that a great number of students enroll in the courses as part of their missionary training programs, and come to class understanding successful learning to mean gathering enough information about the world's religious…

This paper presents a critique of a set of teaching strategies known as "contemplative pedagogy." Using practices such as meditation, attentive listening, and reflective reading, contemplative inquiry focuses on direct first-person experience as an essential means of knowing that has historically been overshadowed and dismissed by an…

Asynchronous online instruction has become increasingly popular in the field of religious studies. However, despite voluminous research on online learning in general and numerous articles on online theological instruction, there has been little discussion of how to effectively design and deliver online undergraduate courses in religious studies.…

This study identifies the dominant modes of biblical interpretation being taught in introductory Bible courses through a qualitative analysis of course syllabi from three institutional contexts: evangelical Christian colleges, private colleges, and public universities. Despite a proliferation of methods and scholarly approaches to the Bible, this…

In this essay I propose that using online tools to connect geographically-separated classrooms for real-time collaborative learning experiences may effectively develop intercultural competency in the religious studies classroom. I explore personal examples from several international and inter-institutional collaborations with Jacques Derrida's…

This series of short essays considers the complex choices and decision-making processes of instructors preparing to teach, and continuing to teach, introductory courses in religious studies. In a paper originally presented in the University of Chicago's "The Craft of Teaching in the Academic Study of Religion" series, Russell McCutcheon…

This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in "Teaching Theology and Religion" 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of…

This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in "Teaching Theology and Religion" 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of…

This essay is part of a collection of short essays solicited from authors around the globe who teach religion courses at the college level (not for professional religious training). They are published together with an introduction in "Teaching Theology and Religion" 18:3 (July 2015). The authors were asked to provide a brief overview of…

Like religious studies, Jewish studies is an academic exploration of literature, ritual, history, philosophy, and experience across disciplinary boundaries. As with all area studies, Jewish studies balances itself--often precariously--as a bridge across that range of methodological options. The breadth of theories employed by each has complicated…

When it came time to reevaluate and restructure the introductory year in Christian history and theology, I decided to use a roundtable of student consultants to help me in that work. Our research and reflection focused on the impact of postmodern thinking and learning, feedback from pastors in ministry, a desire to bring appropriate praxis into…

In response to our increasingly global and multicultural world, undergraduate degree plans have come to include courses, which meet the "Diversity" requirement. While "diversity" may have a variety of definitions, clearly the educational institution believes that all students earning a degree should complete course work that exposes them to…