About the Book
Eugene V. Gallagher and Patricia O’Connell have influenced a generation of religious studies professors through their leadership in Wabash Center teaching workshops. In this book, contributors pay tribute to their influence and build on their insights in short essays focused on three perennial themes: Place, Plan, and Persona.
Firstly, the book considers how negotiating your institutional context is essential to effective teaching. Reflections include essays on places of learning, the interaction between person and place, and the online teaching environment. Secondly, the contributors explore how effective teaching requires intentional self-critical design of students’ intellectual experience, from the arc of the course, to the scope and purpose of the curriculum. Topics include planning for playfulness, teaching ‘strangeness’, and strengthening student engagement. In the final section on persona, topics include humour in the classroom, authenticity in the teaching profession, team teaching, and ungrading.
This book contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning in religious studies and higher education by engaging Gallagher and Killen’s insights, and by exploring a range of perspectives on core and enduring pedagogical concepts and questions.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: A Teaching Festschrift for Gene and Patricia, Thomas Pearson (Eckerd College, USA)
Part 1: Plan
1. Midrange Reflection for the Climate Rebellion: How the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Can Inform Activism, Kevin J. O’Brien(Pacific Lutheran University, USA)
2. Paschal Pedagogy, Mara Brecht (Loyola University Chicago, USA)
3. Art and the Unexpected, Alicia J. Batten (Conrad Grebel University College, Canada)
4. Laughter in the Temple: Hermeneutics and Humor in Teaching Religion, Anita Houck (Saint Mary's College - Notre Dame, USA)
5. Planning for Playfulness, Richard S. Ascough (Queens University, Canada)
6. The Tao of the Post-It: Empowering Student Engagement in Gene Gallagher’s Classroom, Lydia Willsky-Ciollo (Fairfield University, USA)
7. Taking the General Education Student Seriously, Bruce David Forbes (Morningside College, USA, emeritus)
8. The Challenges of Teaching as Racial and Ethnic Minority Scholars, Kwok Pui-lan (Candler School of Theology, USA)
9. The Magic or Midrange Reflection Molly H. Bassett (Georgia State University, USA)
Part 2: Persona
10. Overcoming Fears of a Normative Valence, Susan Marks (New College of Florida, USA)
11. A Vulnerable Persona: Wrestling with the Legacy of Jean Vanier, Reid B. Locklin (University of Toronto, Canada) and Andrea Nicole Carandang (University of Toronto, Canada)
12. “Ungrading” and the Unmaking of Professorial Persona, Kathryn D. Blanchard (Alma College, USA)
13. Tennis, Anyone? Joanne Maguire (University of North Carolina, Charlotte, USA)
Part 3: Place
14. Who Is in the Chair? The Professor Faces the Classroom, Arthur M. Sutherland (Loyola University Maryland, USA)
15. Finding Your Place on the Map, Rebekka King (Middle Tennessee State University, USA)
16. Mise en Place: Efficiency and Ethics in the Practice of Teaching,
Tina Pippin (Agnes Scott College, USA)
17. Teaching About Religion and/at/as the Edge: From What to
How to Why, Davina C. Lopez (Eckerd College, USA)
List of Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Davina C. Lopez is Professor of Religious Studies and Chair of the Letters (Humanities) Collegium, Eckard College, USA.
Thomas Pearson is Director of the Nielsen Center for the Liberal Arts at Eckerd College, USA.
Review :
Teaching and Learning Religion celebrates the incredible pedagogical legacy of Patricia Killen and Gene Gallagher. Through a variety of engaging and well-researched case studies from diverse perspectives, their students make this legacy tangible for readers. The chapters illustrate how scholars of religion can engage students in the classroom and enliven the study of religion in the twenty-first century.
In this tribute to Eugene Gallagher and Patricia O’Connell Killen, Davina Lopez and Tom Pearson present seventeen original essays on teaching written by scholars in the field of religious studies. As one lucky enough to have been mentored by these giants of pedagogy, I am moved and inspired by this celebration of their guidance. Teaching and Learning Religion should be required reading for religion scholars before entering a classroom.
Lopez and Pearson's useful and delightful volume gathers talented teachers to offer reflections on and from their engagement with two master teachers in religious studies, Eugene V. Gallagher and Patricia O'Connell Killen. From developing voice, to finding the "'sweet spot"' in teaching difficult subjects, to laughter in the classroom, the work offers much to ponder on the hard work of teaching and learning.
