Description

This hybrid workshop gathers faculty of Asian descent from diverse religious specializations and across the different career stages to participate in a community for six monthly online sessions and an in-person meeting in June 2026. Centering our Asian and Asian American identities, spiritualities, histories, and knowledges, this community seeks to co-create conditions for our renewed imagination, professional alignment, and agency. 

As a learning community of committed and skilled teachers, this hybrid workshop will explore issues such as:

• pedagogy and politics of faculty, especially the realities of racism
• thriving in one’s institutional context
• teaching religious, social, racial/ethnic, and learning diversities in the classroom
• connecting the classroom to broader social issues
• addressing the changing landscape in higher education
• remembering the joy, wonder, awe, and purposes of our teacher-scholar-artist professions 
• sharing the stories and re-crafting the narratives that shape our personal and professional trajectories

There will be a balance of plenary sessions, small group discussions, structured and unstructured social time, and time for relaxation, exercise, meditation, discovery, laughter, karaoke, and – during the in-person session – lots of good food and drink.

Workshop Goals

• To develop a professional network of mutually supportive teachers/scholars of Asian descent
• To speak candidly about the politics and pressures of teaching and learning in higher education, including in mono- or multicultural contexts
• To promote the possibilities of teaching in a religiously pluralistic context
• To unearth and curate a repository of resources for our teaching styles, specializations, and tools
• To explore the different pathways of engaging in public scholarship 
• To interrogate the institutional reward systems that shape our agency, desires, and imaginations
• To examine the dynamic, evolving relationship between our professional formation and community-focused aspirations toward wholeness and liberation.