Resources

To date, one thousand colleges and universities have engaged the Interfaith Youth Core (IFYC) to catalyze interfaith cooperation, educate interfaith leaders, and build knowledge of faith traditions. Authored by the founder of IFYC, Interfaith Leadership contributes to a key IFYC goal: to train seven thousand interfaith leaders by 2020. Sharing his journey to interfaith leadership (Chapter 1), Patel discusses his theory of interfaith understanding (Chapters 2-3), shares his leadership vision (Chapter 4), and identifies leaders’ knowledge, skills, and personal qualities (Chapters 5-7). “Inter” in “interfaith” references “interaction between people who orient around religion differently”; “faith” stands for “how people relate to their religious and ethical traditions.” With the term interfaith, Patel highlights reciprocal influences: interactions with others impact how we relate to “our” religious and ethical traditions as well as to “theirs.” Interfaith leaders guide persons across a “landscape of religious diversity” toward “interfaith cooperation.” Can religious studies programs play a role in campus interfaith leadership training? Patel’s understanding of religious studies is informed by Wilfred Cantwell Smith. As Patel understands Smith, the academic study of religion errs because it looks at “systems” divorced from religious practice. For Patel, “religious system” means faith viewed through a religious studies lens. By contrast, interfaith explorations engage personal practices. Patel identifies two potential models of interfaith leadership: Stephen Prothero and Karen Armstrong. While Prothero focuses on systems (doctrines, texts, and rituals), neglecting the diversity and specificity of lived faith, Armstrong attends to “human-heartedness,” generalizing about spiritual traditions in ways that make these traditions unrecognizable to their adherents. Interfaith leaders, by contrast, support embedded dialogue. Patel illustrates: when the lone Muslim student in a world religions class declares he has never before heard the terms “Shia” and “Sunni,” his professor’s “abstract” approach to Islam is shown irrelevant to other students’ who comprehend “real world” Muslim faith. Eschewing “deficits, problems, and ugliness,” interfaith perspectives “appreciate” the “beautiful, life-giving, and admirable” in religion, building relationships through story-telling. For example, Patel attributes changes in the US between 1928 and 1955 in attitudes about Jews to the NCCJ (originally the National Conference of Christians and Jews. It currently refers to the National Conference for Community and Justice), an interfaith entity, not to the scholarly study of anti-Semitism. Patel also highlights a case study. Doctors trained in Western medicine identify symptoms of epilepsy in a Hmong child. Her parents, believing she is becoming a shaman, do not comply with treatment plans. A seizure puts the child in a vegetative state. Patel ponders whether an “appreciative understanding” of Hmong faith by the doctors could have led to a different outcome. IFYC does valuable work on campuses, promoting conversations about religion that make it safer for students of diverse traditions to express faith without fear. On some campuses, religious studies departments have been included in IFYC initiatives. However, participants in campus IFYC initiatives whose knowledge of the academic study of religion is drawn only from Interfaith Leadership will benefit from outreach by religious studies faculty. We can foster an informed understanding of our field as a vital resource for students seeking the knowledge, skills, and personal qualities needed by leaders in a religiously diverse world.

Dewey in Our Time is a volume of collected essays that provides an overview of Deweyan scholarship since the original publication of John Dewey’s Democracy and Education in 1916. Recognizing the continuing influence of Dewey’s works, the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain and the History of Education Society, UK invited scholars of education, philosophy, history, educational policy, and cultural studies to contribute to this volume. The volume is composed of an introduction and two main parts. In Part I, “Dewey in Changing Cultural Contexts,” the authors critically reinterpret Dewey’s wisdom and apply it to the educational contexts of Finland, Singapore, Spain, Japan, the UK, Australia, and the US. The diverse essays in this section engage with Dewey’s work on a philosophical level while also accounting for the histories that affect its reception in different national contexts. Taken together, the perspectives of authors from a variety of disciplines shed important light on the ways “science and epistemology, religion and politics” interact in the domain of education (3). Part 2 is titled “Dewey, Pedagogy, and Practice in Our Time.” “Our time” here refers to the first decades of the twenty-first century, seen in relation to and even under the shadow of the past and future. Hence, Part 2 treats the world in which teachers and educators work, live, and research as a space in constant flux. Each contributor to this section discusses Dewey’s relevance to a particular challenge in contemporary education. The essays make connections between “educative experience and experimentation; experience and moral judgment; doubt, difficulty, and struggle; and … action research” (4). Part 2 concludes with a call to replace current models of “citizenship education” with Dewey’s “democratic education.” The most valuable aspect of this book is the discussion of the wide range of Deweyan influences on contemporary education. For example, in Chapter 6, Javier Sáenz Obregón maintains that Dewey’s concept of educational experience has influenced contemporary education in terms of “self-reflection and self-creation” (96). Arguing that teachers, like students, are the “subjects of educational experience,” Obregón asserts that we must learn to apply to teachers the same aspirations we have for students (96). In particular, pedagogical practices should promote “inter-subjective transformation” for teachers and students alike (96). Andres English argues in Chapter 8 that Dewey’s concept of “struggle in learning” has influenced definitions of learning and of learning’s beginning point in contemporary education. Connecting Dewey’s concept of learning to historical and contemporary concepts of philosophical education (Plato, Rousseau, and J.F. Herbart), English distinguishes between productive and destructive forms of struggle and discusses how these conceptual distinctions can inform educational practice, based on the idea of the “in-between of learning” (129) – a condition of being beyond ignorance but not yet in possession of full knowledge. This condition is uncomfortable and difficult, but it offers rich possibilities for reflective thinking. Overall, Dewey in Our Time successfully demonstrates Dewey’s ongoing legacy in educational practice, policy making, and curriculum development and illuminates the ongoing Dewey-inspired research on historical and philosophical education. Teachers and educators will greatly benefit from this volume when undertaking the daunting task of pedagogical reconstruction in the face of changing realities. Researchers will gain deeper insight into the historical and philosophical underpinnings behind educational practice.

Empowering Learners with Mobile Open-Access Learning Initiatives is a well-designed book giving an overview and awareness to mobile activities as they can be provided in an educational setting. The anthology was compiled by Michael Mills and Donna Wake, both from the University of Central Arkansas. Most of the studies are North American, but there is ample diversity of circumstances in the populations studied and techniques showcased. The book is separated into four parts: practice, curriculum, assessment, and theory. This book will likely become a historic piece of educational observation on today’s environment, but just as importantly, it is future-looking. So how is the future looking? The authors are clearly optimistic about the future of higher education. The evidence shows the effectiveness of mobile technologies to provide a more equal and motivated voice in society. Considering the Wabash Center for Teaching in Learning in Theology and Religion’s audience, this book would be most effective for those in curriculum development and assessment. It is easy to read, but scientifically formatted. Each chapter constitutes a separate study contributing to the overall discussion, and new vocabulary is introduced and defined at the conclusion of each chapter. The publisher, IGI Global, is an established publisher of Information Science and this text could be useful even as a textbook for courses in Information Science and Technology. The book could have been enhanced through a greater diversity of authorship and a wider distribution of geographical locations. Mobile technology is world-reaching, but much of this book’s arguments were grounded in a Western cultural understanding of the world. It would have been helpful for that to have been disclosed in the preface as a both a limitation of this volume and a signal for further study about student learning in online open-access models of education. There was some effort by the authors to attend to issues related to physical and learning disabilities and learning needs of underprivileged communities. However, the only examples the authors provide outside of the United States were Kenya and Portugal. The real value of the book is its comprehensive structure of presentation and approach to mobile technology as a discipline. It does not make light of the common lay person’s experience with mobile technology. Rather, there is a sense of power behind today’s and the future’s possibilities for reducing social barriers in education. Empowering Learners with Mobile Open-Access Learning Initiatives would be an excellent contribution to a higher education library, and that is said without hesitancy even when the examples of technology in the book could be somewhat fleeting given the rapid changes in technology and online learning.

Educators who value the critical pedagogy of Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, bell hooks, and Peter McLaren will be stretched and stimulated by Craig Hammond’s Hope, Utopia, and Creativity in Higher Education: Pedagogical Tactics for Alternative Futures. Hammond is critical of “institutional structures that have ossified around familiarity and academic routine” (35) and that tend to reproduce “a rather drab journey towards a perdition of apathetic inaction and uncritical conformity” (186). Instead, he advocates for “creative and democratic academic engagement” (11). Or, in more effusive rhetoric, Hammond writes: “The tyranny of … the academic warder, replete with encased frameworks of functionally categorized shells of knowledge, can be transformed to a context where knowledge is collaboratively resituated and revived, inhabited, and co-produced in multiple new and fresh directions” (53). His book includes autobiographical reflections, theoretical interpretations, practical teaching resources, and examples of artifacts created by students in Hammond’s courses at Blackburn College in the UK.   Following an introduction, the book consists of ten chapters organized in three parts. The three chapters of Part 1 develop the pedagogically-relevant theoretical insights of Ernst Bloch, Roland Barthes, and Gaston Bachelard. The level of theoretical sophistication Hammond provides is rare in pedagogical texts. Part 2 begins to put practical substance to a critical, utopian pedagogy. In these three chapters, Hammond draws on Guy Debord and the Situationists to develop pedagogical strategies for creative engagement, illustrates the utopian potential of an alternative pedagogy via an autobiographical example, and provides practical teaching resources (autobiography assignment, peer-assessment framework, and syllabus). In Part 3, Hammond shares artifacts, commentaries, and narratives by learner collaborators in his utopian pedagogy.   The pedagogy offered here – articulated as hopeful and utopian – is more Marxist than religious in its ideals. Nonetheless, given the widespread concern with diversity and inclusion in higher education settings in recent years, professors of theology and religious studies with an appreciation for critical pedagogies will benefit from reflecting on the theoretical ideas and pedagogical strategies offered here. Perhaps the easiest entry point for adaptation of Hammond’s ideas to the religious studies or theology classroom is via his discussion of Guy Debord’s (1970, Detroit: Red & Black) Society of the Spectacle (80ff.), with its clear renunciation of consumer society and the commodification of education. A more hopeful, utopian pedagogy is merited to respond to these societal pressures and allures.   Hammond’s book – with its autobiographical elements, theoretical summaries, and pedagogical materials – combines disparate materials, all conveyed in evocative language (as suggested by the quotations offered above). This is not a book to be skimmed quickly. And this is perhaps as it should be. One of Hammond’s students, quoted in Part 3, comments on the incongruity of sitting in courses in which “the lecturer outlines the ills of didactic teaching and learning, from the front of the classroom, with no sense of irony” (166). By suggesting possibilities rather than delineating best practices, Hammond’s book is better aligned with the pedagogy it champions. Readers will likely find some aspects of the text more stimulating than others. Depending on the reader, perhaps it will be the theory, perhaps the autobiographical reflections of Hammond, perhaps the description of the creative autobiographical project, perhaps something else. As long as some creative and contextually relevant pedagogical intervention in the standard practices of our classrooms arises from this encounter, Hammond will have succeeded in his project of advancing a utopian pedagogy.

Renee Hobbs’s collection of personal narratives from leading thinkers in digital and media literacy is not only a fascinating foray into the field; it also presents various authors’ stories of encounters with dominant theorists across multiple disciplines. Sixteen authors from a myriad of academic disciplines (philosophy, education, communication studies, language and literacy, media studies, and fine arts, among others) spanning a number of occupations (professor, writer, teacher, director, and more) write out their intimate interactions with the theories and theorists (McLuhan, Heidegger, Bakhtin, Barthes, Foucault, Postman, Dewey, and others) that shaped their scholastic and personal lives. Each contribution in this collaborative work is a self-reflection, a collage made up of sundry parts of theory, experience, and practice. This collection started with Hobbs’s desire to unearth the historical origins of media literacy and trace the complex genealogy of media literacy. Hobbs diverges from the traditional historical treatise, in form as well as in content, by soliciting personal narratives from contributors, asking them to search out their intellectual grandparents, to map the DNA of the theories that shaped their lives and their work. While the subject is fairly standard, the vehicle (personal memoir) adds a compelling nuance to the investigation. If we take Marshall McLuhan at his word and the medium is, in fact, the message, then Hobbs’s collection is not only an exploration of media literacy but is also an embodiment of it. Although reticent to endorse one orthodox definition of media literacy, Hobbs describes media literacy as “the knowledge, competencies, and social practices involved in using, analyzing, evaluating, and creating mass media, popular culture, and digital media” (9). Media represent any form of communication and literacy, the ability to decipher said communication, and reaches far beyond the bounds of print. And media literacy, according to Hobbs, invites a deeper exploration of important issues concerning “heightened critical consciousness,” “the social nature of representation and interpretation,” “the dialectic of protection and empowerment,” as well as “the role of art in the practice of civic activism,” to name only a few (9). It is clear that development of media literacy is crucial not only for sustaining a world economy, connecting global communities, and engendering personal enrichment, but also vital for the creation of informed and engaged citizens. The whole collection is engaging and picking favorite contributions is a difficult task. However, I found David Weinberger’s description of his college-age identity crisis, subsequent nihilism, and profound encounter with Martin Heidegger’s concept of “Dasein,” intriguing and not a little humorous. Weinberger’s view of life and language (and therefore media), as inherited from Heidegger’s philosophy, emphasizes the inherent shared nature of media. Cynthia Lewis’s chapter explores media literacy via the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin and provides another example of the shared nature of media and how, as Bakhtin emphasized, “the word in language is half someone else’s” (78). Lewis succinctly summarizes Bakhtin’s view of language as “foundationally dialogic, intertextual, and heteroglossic” (78). Lewis also relates how her familial connection to Rabbinic Judaism’s love of dialogue, her suspicion of authority and institutions, her research interest in discourse analysis, and her role as a teacher of workshops on critical literacy brought her to love Bakhtin’s view of language as infinitely nuanced and beautifully complicated. Although previously familiar with Heidegger and Bakhtin, the work of Jerome Brunner, a cognitive psychologist, and scholar, was completely unknown to me when I picked up this book. In Hobbs’s chapter, she relives the three times she encountered Bruner’s work: as a child, in graduate school, and when she actually met Bruner - and how this fortuitous encounter led her to create this book. I am personally enamored with the role that narrative plays in personal and communal lives so Hobbs’s synthesis of Bruner’s view of people’s personal life stories as constructed, culturally shaped “variations on the culture’s canonical forms and stories” speaks to me (192). As I experienced, Hobbs’s collection about media literacy performs the function of media literacy as it explains the higher functions of media literacy. I highly recommend this collection for anyone interested in the reflexive relationship between scholarship and the personal (faculty, administrators, graduate students, academic advisors, and lay people alike). Although not a primer text on theory, this collection, by utilizing the lens of personal experience, makes an engaging text for those with even a moderate interest in theory and literacy.

Not a pedagogical tool, “This book provides a detailed look at the current state of Latino/a theological education in the United States” (26). A compilation of research, it begins and ends using data to logically demonstrate the importance of theological education beyond denominations: (1) churches are anchor institutions in areas of poverty that provide critical services which are cost effective; (2) these churches partner to build social capital and personal relationships; (3) seminary educated religious leaders are better prepared to lead such vital churches. However, this is also an issue vital to denominations because demographic and religious adherence data suggest “Hispanic peoples are the future of Christianity” (469). Finally, it is an important issue for seminaries which not only wish to participate in that greater good beyond denomination by addressing diversity, but also wish to attract and retain faculty who are: comparatively young yet experienced, likely to hold more graduate degrees than required and speak more than one language, love teaching and excel as educators, are hard-working and open-minded, view their academic work as a vocation and persevere in their denominational affiliation, and who have a natural proclivity to span divides among races, partisan politics, languages, ethnicities as well as between seminaries and local churches. These are all descriptors of Latina/o faculty. Though lengthy, the book is an easy read due to its helpful introduction and chapters that both provide both an opening summary and concluding recommendations. Chapter ten is the most challenging because it moves the discussion beyond inclusion to justice: “push against tokenism, stereotyping, monocultural curricula….recognizing scholarship and teaching….[push for] greater transparency…” (326). Two chapters provide case studies on seminaries that are models of this inclusive justice. Another chapter describes the worthy efforts of the Hispanic Summer Program and the Hispanic Theological Initiative, both important partners for schools serious about increasing the number of their Latino/a faculty, which is a key take-away because “Latino/as beget more Latino/as” (445). Every positive outcome documented appears predicated on the presence of Latina/o faculty. Chapter thirteen is a groundbreaking study of Bible Institutes. Among the most important recommendations is a kind of mutual mentoring. Latina/o faculty need and want to be mentored; non-Latino/a deans and presidents with good will but poor skills concerning diversity would profit by listening to those faculty. If they do, everyone benefits. Another urgent need is continual training on diversity for faculty, students, staff, administrators, and board members. “Through Hispanic Eyes” (chapter fourteen) serves as an example. Although not exhaustive, the bibliography is comprehensive. An index would have been helpful, and given the repeated assertion that Catholic seminaries compare well to their Protestant counterparts, a case study of a Catholic seminary seems missing. Nonetheless, this is not a book to be shelved or filed, but rather one to spark necessary debate and urgent action.

Brazilian writer Eliane Brum tells this story: Vanderley was a man who used to go to an agriculture fair in the south of Brazil with a broomstick saying that this broomstick was a pure breed horse. He was known around as the “little cuckoo guy.” One day I asked him, "Are you really Cuckoo Vanderley?" And he said, "Don’t you think I know this isn’t a pureblood horse? That this is just a stick? But this is my way of thinking about that which I will never have.” Perhaps we teachers could be more like Vanderley, a little cuckoo, imagining that which we cannot think, have, or teach, and make it our own. Perhaps we can engage a double pedagogical movement: to listen to those students who actually have a broomstick and see what meanings they give to it, and help those students who don’t have one to invent a broomstick as a pure breed horse, or whatever else, and make it their own. Our classrooms need an inventory of broomsticks! Broomsticks that can give us a sense of our reality. In order to do that we need more art! Art helps us access the madness of our realities. Art helps us think and feel differently. Art gives us access to different forms of reasoning of our bodies and our relations in our world. Art wires our brain differently. Art gives us a space beyond objectivity so we can venture into the unknown in order to reshape our realities. Unfortunately, our pedagogies are often centered in objective knowledge, positivistic thinking based on progress, and detached forms of thinking that celebrate a necessary distance between the seeing and the thing seen. Sadly enough, this form of knowledge can’t catch our realities from the point of view of Vanderley. We need something else. We need other venues and forms of thinking that can help us invent and imagine something that can actually affect our reality. We feel that our objective words can grasp our reality in some forms and yet, it feels also that what we say is like unopened letters that end up returning to us.[1] We can’t be transformed only by precise objective readings of our reality. We need the enchantment of the unknown, gray areas of thoughts and beliefs, the uncontrolled parts of our lives, the broomsticks of Vanderley. The Brazilian theologian, poet, philosopher, and sociologist Rubem Alves lived in the academy for many years and produced many books. One day he realized that his kind of work wouldn’t change people. He then started to write short essays and children stories. With the theoretical knowledge he gained, he delved into the abyss of the quotidian life of people by way of children stories. He would mix Escher, Camus, Bachelard, Bach, Celan and many others with daily events in life. I was introduced to art by his theo-poetics writings. In my classrooms, I am growing more skeptical of only objective readings of realities. We are lost trying to grasp the ever-expansive disasters of our lives. We need rituals! We need art to tap into that aspect where objective knowledge can’t go. Words alone can’t do it. We need other mediums to express the absurd of our present, to retell stories of pain and trauma of our past and imagine our future. Without addressing the present, reshaping the past, and gaining a good sense of future we will be lead to a future that will continue not to be ours. However, life will be given to those who can invent life in its multiple, timely possibilities. And for that, we need new partners! When we bring Doris Salcedo to our classrooms we have a much-expanded way of addressing violence, trauma, and loss. When we invite Tania Bruguera and Weiwei to present their works to us, we can have a better sense of repressive governments and societal systems. It is when we wrestle with Favianna Rodriguez, Justin Favela, Guillermo Gómez-Pena, Jacob Lawrence, Kerry James Marshall, and Alvin Ailey Dance that we can wrestle with a flow of white supremacy, race and identity politics. When we deal with the artist Banksy, we can learn about social contestation. When we engage Giuseppe Campuzano and Miguel A. López, we see new figurings of sexualities and gender nuances and immensities. When we open up to know Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist, we can see the complex collective interdisciplinary environmental colonial/postcolonial gaze of native people. It is when we listen and watch Mona Haydar, Beyoncé, and Kendrick Lamar, we can deal with the cultural racial pop culture. We indeed need more art in our classroom! But we have many challenges to do that. First, we don’t feel we have enough expertise to do it. We would need to learn how to teach it. Second, we don’t know what to do to assess it. Once in a faculty meeting, I heard from friends that they wish they could use more art but they don’t have criteria to evaluate any work of art. Third, art doesn’t seem to have the same academic weight. We all know the fight Cornel West had to undergo at Harvard when he was accused by the president Lawrence Summers for not doing proper scholarship when he ventured into recording a rap CD. Yes, to use art we need to cross these boundaries. We have to venture into that weary space in order to know a little more. But we can start by looking and imagining. And helping our students to look and invent as well. The best “final projects” in my classes are the ones students can imagine and invent. Perhaps we can give up a little of our sense that we have to control every corner of what is to be taught, both for proper reasoning and meaning, but also for coherence. Not to dismiss intellectualism and proper theoretical work, but to actually expand it for better ways to grasp life. Perhaps we can start by trying some new things out. GO visit a museum, a street artist, a mural. Perhaps we can start by listening to a song, watching a performance in a video, looking at a picture. And let the artists help us expand ourselves and our imagery/imagining. They might help us dream, invent, figure out something else! They might help us see that Vanderley’s broomstick is indeed a pure breed horse! And that we desperately need one too! [1]Eliane Brum, O Brasil desassombrado pelas palavras-fantasmas. Como o sonho e a arte podem nos ajudar a acessar a realidade e a romper a paralisia, https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2017/07/10/opinion/1499694080_981744.html Resources:  http://www.stedelijkstudies.com/journal/transvestite-museum-of-peru/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idMJIEFH_ns http://postcommodity.com/About.html http://favianna.tumblr.com

In a previous blog post, I sounded an optimistic note about the believing educational community that engages profoundly with various streams of the religious tradition – in my case, the Muslim tradition. As I contemplate a valuable piece by SherAli Tareen on the potential issues with which we regard as critical secular pedagogy, I anticipate some of the pedagogical decisions I will make this semester. I teach at the American Islamic College, one of only two Islamic liberal arts colleges in the United States. This generates a unique and continuing set of pedagogical and disciplinary questions for me - questions that I do not usually find reflected in my colleagues’ pedagogical concerns regarding the teaching of Islam in the academy.   My feelings of - shall we say, comfort – in teaching Islam to mostly Muslim students are tempered by practical pedagogical concerns as I am a Muslim, female professor who teaches gender at a Muslim college in the United States. Apart from the study of religion, classroom spaces in general can be battlegrounds for identities. A dash of critical distance can be a useful addition to the red-hot dynamics in classroom discussions. I nervously anticipate certain pedagogical situations in Muslim-majority learning settings as my own, as well as in mainstream academia, where critical distance is my go-to approach. Most of my Muslim students are eager to understand diverse perspectives on religious issues, and have been astoundingly eager to broaden their horizons, even to the point of intellectual discomfort. Still, I have learned to expect the Guerilla Student. He (usually) does not form a majority in my classes. But when he makes an appearance, he steps into the academic fray, brandishing a Qur'anic verse, intent upon shutting down any "wayward" discourse. As the class community contemplates various religious perspectives on Muslim politics, this student brings in And be not disunited (Qur’an 3:103). The discussion quickly falls flat, everyone hangs their heads piously, as if to contemplate the frivolity of human words before the Word, and that is that. Or the Guerilla Student lobs a Prophet tradition into the controversy, and the hadith instantly establishes a literalistic, atomistic framework over the intellectual community - a framework that allows for a singular one-dimensional view of religion, and therefore, shuts down discussion as unnecessary or even reprehensible. A young fervent woman might react negatively to the complexification of a religious problem, demanding a simple response to her “Well, should I do it or not?” The impact of such guerrilla warfare is to silence, at least temporarily, the majority of students who are interested in investigating the sociological implications of religious norms, who wish to explore the contextual deployment of religious sources, and who are interested in a religious world where people disagree. In other words, says the Guerilla Student, let's just shut our books and our mouths, and retire to our corners and recite Qur'an. Not that I haven't frequently been tempted to do the same, because ambiguity isn't exactly soothing. In anticipation of the Guerrilla Student, I set up a classroom community where, most importantly, students must engage with the required readings in all discussions. No one can simply show up without doing any of the work and, swaggering, simply toss the grenades of Scriptural texts amidst the group. Anyone who hasn’t done the reading will be reminded that entrance to discussion is guarded by the test of academic work. I explicitly state in my syllabus: "You must develop the analytic habit of considering various perspectives, including opposing ones." This is troubling to the student who regards feminist interrogations of the Qur’an as disrespectful and impious. To some, these readings are not worshipful. For students who study Islam to seek piety rather than profound understanding, this is a distraction. For some Muslim students, a Gender course would be better served by Maudoodi’s Purdah and the Status of Women in Islam rather than Kecia Ali’s Sexual Ethics in Islam. I add, in my syllabus, "In this academic setting, all claims and opinions must be supported by scholarly evidence and reasoning." In these words, I establish that the setting was an academic one, and not a religious one. To some students, this is disappointing. To me, as a religious Muslim academic, it’s not entirely truthful. I do regard academic Islam as worship. Moreover, the evidence expected is human scholarship. This establishes the importance of interpretation. To the believer who sees his or her interpretations as self-evidently true, this is blasphemous.   When I classify my classroom as an academic one, I clarify that no one may come in with their credentials as local imam and become the lecturer here. In terms of my role as facilitator and my authority as course instructor, a religious educational setting is dangerously democratic. A religious classroom demands clerical or seminary/madrasa credentials; with my Ph.D., I am not appropriately appareled. Any public preachers, study-circle leaders or madrasa-trained males could always turn up their noses at my Western academic credentials.  And then there is patriarchy. As a woman - of color (and of short stature) - my pedagogic authority is always at risk in all classrooms. Most of my Muslim students bring a deeply Islamic affectionate respect to my teaching. In fact, my Muslim students at AIC humanize and respect me in a way that, in my previous teaching experience, many of my White students never did. I cannot express how deeply refreshing this teacher-student relationship is, in contrast to the experiences I had before. But there has been the occasional male student - especially when I taught Islam & Gender - who finds the dynamic in my class intolerable. At times, such a student drops the class, but not before lobbing the Scriptural grenades and disrupting the analytic discussion. If he simply evades the readings, he succeeds in getting by in a disturbingly water-off-a-duck’s-back manner. A student committed to patriarchy could not stomach the idea of a female professor who taught Amina Wadud and Leila Ahmed - or a female professor who gave out C's.  When Islam is used as a patriarchal stick to establish the authority of literalism, or Islamism, or Traditionalism, or sexism, critical distance in pedagogy can be a handy shield. When the literalistic, patriarchal, hegemonic interpretations are brandished in my classroom, I do sometimes brandish certain critical secular tools. "We cannot throw out ayaat or ahadith as responses to a question. You can bring your readings of those sources to the discussion, but they are readings. You cannot use the Qur'an to shut everyone up.” "But," sputters a certain kind of student, “It should shut everyone up.” This critical distance and interpretive freedom is widely regarded as critical secular pedagogy. But it is not just that. To me, as a Muslim professor, it is also an internal Muslim tool to safeguard the right to ikhtilaf (difference of opinion). But when I embrace this tool of critical distance as an Islamic one, there is always the danger that we commence the battle of my-source-trumps-yours. Appeals to religious authority in religious settings can close debate. I respect and value the sources, but there is a danger in how they are deployed by my interlocutors. The problem isn’t the Qur’anic verse being lobbed by the student. In such pedagogical encounters, I’m at the mercy of the Guerilla Students. I’m hostage to the personality of the discussant at risk, to his conception of adab (etiquette) in Islamic education. Any pedagogical approach must necessarily be multi-faceted and respectful of its context. As a Muslim professor of Islamic Studies, I combine a believer's loving commitment with an explorer's dedication to the journey. I ask my students to bring the same intrepid commitment to this path. No woman or man will be allowed to blow up the trail. I'll deploy any tools necessary to protect the trail. Critical distance is one of those tools. Critical distance is frequently used in secular settings to shut down Muslim critiques of dogmatic secularity. But my critical distance is different. It is a protective distance of love.

The creation of a successful learning environment involves the examination and improvement upon current teaching practices. As new strategies emerge, it becomes imperative to incorporate them into the classroom. Student-Driven Learning Strategies for the 21st Century Classroom provides a thorough examination of the benefits and challenges experienced in learner-driven educational settings and how to effectively engage students in these environments. Focusing on technological perspectives, emerging pedagogies, and curriculum development, this book is ideally designed for educators, learning designers, upper-level students, professionals, and researchers interested in innovative approaches to student-driven education. Topics Covered The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to: Literacy Development Non-Traditional Students Reflective Learning Self-Management Strategies Service Learning Student Creativity Virtual Learning (From the Publisher)

I owe a great deal of my pedagogical approach to Vincent and Rosemarie Harding. The way I teach has been profoundly impacted by watching and learning from these activist teaching elders in the Black-led freedom struggle. Have you ever had a teacher who was a good story teller? A teacher who was so good that he or she pulled you into the teaching moment and it made you feel as though you were living history? Have you had a teacher who was so authentic, so responsive, so tuned in that you felt like you could make change? The Hardings, and teachers like them, keep this at the center of their teaching relationships and community. Some other characteristics these kinds of master teachers have in common are: 1) Personal lives that are consistent with what they teach about social change and justice, 2) A belief that every person has someone in their ancestry that has been a social change agent, 3) The conviction that the stories of ordinary people can be used to inspire others, and 4) A belief that religion is a force for justice. Let me give an example of such a model.   A small crowd gathered at Pendill Hill retreat center to listen to Black-led freedom struggle elder Vincent Harding. Harding made his way to the front of the room. He sat down and looked over the crowd. He began to speak. In that moment the room grew quiet and even my restless three-year-old crawled off my lap, stood, and waited in anticipation. After a few warm smiles and opening remarks, in his own Harding way, he led us in a conversation. It was a truly dialogical experience. Harding invited the body of people gathered to share their own stories as he shared his own. During the remainder of the program, one could sense the ancestors among us. As the evening drew to a close, Harding shared a deeply moving piece on the last time he saw Martin Luther King Jr. He told us how he and three other men had been asked by Corretta King to stand nonviolent watch over King’s body as it lay in state in Atlanta. Harding drew the midnight to morning shift. He reminded us that the only people coming to pay their respects at that time of the night were either coming from work or going to work. “Martin’s people.” These were not celebrities or dignitaries, but the people of the movement. He tearfully talked about a nurse and man who had been to the bar before coming. As the evening closed, Harding asked sister Sonia Sanchez to do a piece of spoken word. Sanchez moved the community with a 15-minute piece she created from hearing the stories of the people present. Sadly, this would be the last time I would hear Vincent Harding talk in public. However, the evening reflected the pedagogy created by Rosemarie and Vincent Harding, that is, circles of people listening and learning from one another. Both Vincent and Rosemarie Harding were awe-inspiring master teachers who made their students/participants understand they too were a part of movement-making and the Beloved Community. They were the kind of teachers that many of us seek to be to our students. It is these models that guide me in helping students to learn about their own justice roots. Creating the space for students to listen and to reflect is important if we want to connect them to social justice movements. In religious studies, as well as in peace studies, one of the goals is to make students feel connected to what is taking place socially and politically. Students often come into religious studies classes looking for a place to explore the big questions about life and to learn what others think. Combining the idea of connecting students socially and politically with an opportunity to explore the big questions opens a space for students to find their religious justice roots. Here are some exercises I use in my religious studies and peace studies classes to foster student’s investment in social change while providing an opportunity to think about their religious justice roots: Students read Vincent Harding’s “Do Not Grow Weary or Lose Heart” and Grace Lee Boggs’ “In Person.”[i] Afterwards I give this prompt: Each of us finds inspiration for how we want to live our lives. Many of us have an understanding of what it means to stand up for what is right or just. Places of inspiration can be family (or family-like) legacies. Students may choose to write a paper about someone in their family that inspires them to be a just person. The student should clearly identify the person in their family (or someone they would consider like family) that inspires his or her life. What did they do? How did you learn about this person? How does the person relate to your sense of social justice and what is right? How does this relate to what the authors had to say in their articles? Students read Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Rachel E. Harding’s book Remnants A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering over the course of the semester.[ii] About every two weeks there are small group discussions about the readings in class. Students are prompted to discuss their understanding of the readings, but they are also asked how the readings relate to religion, politics, community, family, and justice. The book is written in such a way that students quickly find things to which they can relate. The end of the semester assignment is a reflection on the connection between religion, family, community, and justice. At the end of the semester, it is always my hope that students find their roots in social justice. For many, their roots are in religious communities and family. Once students have established their roots, they begin to grow into the movement for justice. [i] Vincent Harding, “Do Not Grow Weary or Lose Heart,” Veterans of Hope Project.  http://www.veteransofhope.org/do-not-grow-weary-or-lose-heart/. Accessed 25 July 2017. Grace Lee Boggs, “In Person.” In These Times. http://inthesetimes.com/inperson/4060/grace_lee_boggs. Accessed 25 July 2017. [ii] Rosemarie Freeney Harding and Rachel E. Harding, Remnants A Memoir of Spirit, Activism, and Mothering (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015).