Rebecca Makas

Welcome to the Common Questions, an exciting initiative brought to you by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. In this series, we bring together some of the most esteemed scholars and educators in the field to engage with a central, thought-provoking question. The goal is ...

In addition to the general tips on teaching mysticism presented in the previous blog posts (part 1 & part 2), I would like to share some in-class and writing assignments I have used when teaching ʻAṭṭār’s The Conference of the Birds. One of the most successful in-class activities ...

While teaching a mystical text is deeply enriching to the classroom, I find colleagues have two primary trepidations about teaching The Conference of the Birds: (1) presenting mysticism – a subject undergraduates and nonexperts alike often find impenetrable – in a coherent, lucid manner, and (2) accurately and responsibly discussing its specific Islamic context ...

In a first-year seminar guided by the question “Who am I?” my students are often a little shocked that their first reading suggests that they annihilate their sense of self. Though the inner lives of a medieval mystic and a contemporary student at an American university may seem worlds apart, ...