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Volume 1 Number 3 August 2020 The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching An open access, digital journal on teaching in religious and theological studies Published by The Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in GUEST EDITOR Theology and Religion Diane Shane Fruchtman Hosted by Atla [email protected] Published quarterly online ASSOCIATE EDITORS https://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/journal/ Eugene V. Gallagher, Connecticut College (emeritus) Kwok Pui Lan, Emory University Published pursuant to a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC). EDITORIAL BOARD JOURNAL DESCRIPTION Molly Bassett (Mesoamerican Religions) The journal publishes a particular type of academic writing in Georgia State University which teacher-practioners critically reflect on their teaching Jaime Clark-Soles (New Testament) practice—surfacing their assumptions, analyzing their pedagogical Perkins School of Theology, SMU intentions, reflecting on the effectiveness of their learning designs, Carmen Nanko-Fernández (Latinex Theologies) and diagnosing challenges to student learning. Catholic Theological Union Martin Nguyen (Islamic Religious Traditions) Fairfield University Joseph Lennis Tucker Edmonds (African and African American Religion) IUPUI Andrea White (Theology and Culture) Union Theological Seminary, NYC Benjamin Zeller (Religion in America) Lake Forest College EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Joy Harlos COPY AND PROOF PAGE EDITOR Karen Myers TABLE OF CONTENTS Volume 1 Number 3 August 2020 GUEST EDITOR’S NOTE Annotated Lesson Plan: Paul, Ethnicity, and Belonging 111 The View From Late Antiquity 3 Abby Kulisz Diane Shane Fruchtman, guest editor Learning Design: Discussing Political Issues with Ruth 117 Christy Cobb ARTICLES Politics and the Pedagogue of Late Antiquity 9 Kristi Upson-Saia and Maria E. Doerfler TEACHING TACTICS The Past, Present, and Religious Studies Future of Civic Seeing the Unseen: Art and Politics in the Biblical Engagement in American Higher Education 23 Studies Classroom 123 Sara Ronis and Travis Proctor Sonja Anderson Positionality and Disclosure in the Religious Studies “Town Hall Meeting” on the Bible in Contemporary Classroom 41 Issues 124 Kathleen Gibbons and Diane Shane Fruchtman Chan Sok Park Accepting the Inevitability of Politics in the Classroom: A Proposal for How to Identify Best Practices in Effective and Inclusive Religious Studies Pedagogy 57 BOOK REVIEWS Diane Shane Fruchtman and Chan Sok Park Theologians and Philosophers Using Social Media: Advice, Tips, and Testimonials 125 Thomas Jay Oord Reviewed by Jonathan C. Roach CONVERSATIONS Spirituality, Community, and Race Consciousness All Choice is Political: A Conversation with Shawkat in Adult Higher Education: Breaking the Cycle of Toorawa 73 Racialization 126 Shawkat Toorawa and Maria E. Doerfler Timothy Paul Westbrook Reviewed by Sunder John Boopalan “Keepin’ it Real” — When Scholarship Meets the Political: A Conversation with Shanell T. Smith 81 Online Teaching at Its Best: Merging Instructional Shanell T. Smith and Diane Shane Fruchtman Design with Teaching and Learning Research 127 Linda B. Nilson and Ludwika A. Goodson Reviewed by Allison L. Norton DESIGN AND ANALYSIS Teaching Islamic Studies in the Age of ISIS, Engaging Politics in the New Testament Classroom: Islamophobia and the Internet 128 Excavating a Syllabus 91 Courtney M. Dorroll Tina Shepardson Reviewed by Hussein Rashid Responding to Political Hot Points in Real Time: Achieving Equity and Quality in Higher Education: A Twitter Thread 97 Global Perspectives in an Era of Widening Participation Christopher M. Jones 129 Edited by Mahsood Shah and Jade McKay Building a New Testament Syllabus After the 2016 Reviewed by Katherine Cronin Daley Elections 105 Susanna Drake TABLE OF CONTENTS Grounding Education in the Environmental Building Womanist Coalitions: Writing and Humanities: Exploring Place-Based Pedagogies in Teaching in the Spirit of Love 141 the South 130 Edited by Gary L. Lemons Edited by Lucas F. Johnston and Dave Aftandilian Reviewed by Courtney Pace Reviewed by Melinda Krokus Dynamic Discernment: Reason, Emotion, and Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, Power in Change Leadership 142 and Practice (Third Edition) 131 Sarah B. Drummond Geneva Gay Reviewed by Karla L. McGehee Reviewed by Carolyn B. Helsel Promoting Ethnic Diversity and Multiculturalism in Higher Education 132 Barbara Blummer, Jeffrey M. Kenton, and Michael Wiatrowski Reviewed by Sin Guanci Cultivating Diverse Online Classrooms Through Effective Instructional Design 133 Karen L. Milheim Reviewed by Roxanne L. Russell Rape Culture on Campus 134 Meredith Minister Reviewed by Jaime Clark-Soles Disability in Higher Education: A Social Justice Approach 136 Nancy J. Evans, Ellen M. Broido, Kirsten R. Brown, and Autumn K. Wilke Reviewed by David A. Schones Islam at Jesuit Colleges and Universities 137 Aysha Hidayatullah and Erin Brigham Reviewed by Joshua Canzona Rape Culture and Religious Studies 138 Edited by Rhiannon Graybill, Meredith Minister and Beatrice Lawrence Reviewed by Barbara Thiede Even When No One is Looking: Fundamental Questions of Ethical Education 139 Jan Habl Reviewed by Angela Cowser Educating About Religious Diversity and Interfaith Engagement: A Handbook for Student Affairs 140 Edited by Kathleen M. Goodman, Mary Ellen Giess and EbooPatel Reviewed by Liora Gubkin GUEST EDITOR’S NOTE Diane Shane Fruchtman Rutgers University Special Issue : The View from Late Antiquity Engaging the Political in the Religious Studies Classroom: Lessons from Studying Religion in Late Antiquity Authors’ Note: The articles and contributions in this issue are designed to provide a framework for responsibly incorporating politics into the religious studies classroom. In the eventful months since this Issue has been in production, many new resources have emerged—on accessible pedagogy, anti-racist education, and citational ethics—that can help facilitate this incorporation. For a list of resources that the authors recommend, please see: https://www.engaging-politics-in-religious- studies-classroom.com/. We are living in times marked by rapid change, where long-held assumptions—about identity, history, politics, the environment, and religion, to name a few—are being questioned, upended, and reasserted by turns. Global markets and the internet have made the world seem both smaller and more vast, as people encounter one another across varying axes of difference and otherness, finding fellowship and antagonism in equal measure. Boundless ambition is valorized and habitually on display, while staggering inequality increases by leaps and bounds both globally and within individual countries. Many of these same claims can be made about late antiquity, the period from approximately 250 CE–800 CE in the Mediterranean and Europe. What had once been termed the “dark ages” and dismissed as the wilderness years during which classical civilization unraveled and the Roman Empire collapsed has now been recognized as a vibrant, productive, and distinctive social and cultural era that saw not decline so much as transition, transformation, and an interplay of continuity and change fueled by the same types of dynamics we are seeing today. Late antiquity was marked by new forms of ambition as new means of acquiring power, wealth, and prestige emerged via military, imperial, or ecclesiastical service (among other avenues); it featured shifting concepts of government and theories of rule, of empire and commonwealth; it oversaw expanding understandings of divine power as monotheism spread; and, most spectacularly, it saw the diversification of influential voices, languages, and economies as the influence of Rome diminished.1 All of these shifts have had lasting (but long-unacknowledged) effects. Given these legacies and the resonances between the era we study and our own, scholars of religion in late antiquity who teach in the United States find that the college classroom in 2020 presents a particular challenge. This challenge arises, primarily, from the various disconnects between what our research shows us and what the public often thinks of our time period, our material, and us. The general public often regards late antiquity (when they consider it at all) as either a monolith of benightedness or a chaos of collapse whose primary feature was the progressive disintegration of Roman “civilization.” For other observers, the story of late antiquity is indeed one of growth, expansion, and development, but it is nonetheless a narrow and teleological story, centered on the timeline of how various orthodoxies—Christian, Jewish, and Muslim, primarily—emerged as “winners.”2 From both of these perspectives, scholars of late antiquity would have little reason to engage in politics in the classroom or to teach classes with contemporary political relevance; on these views, our materials are settled, their interpretations largely fixed, and our role as teachers is to serve, apolitically, as guides to static and clearly visible historical tableaux. 1 For helpful introductions to late antiquity, see Johnson (2012), Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar (2001), Rousseau (2012), and Boin (2018). See also the classic Brown (1971, 1996), Cameron (1993a, 1993b), and Fowden (1993). 2 For a problematization of this, along with this model of historical winners and losers, see Gibbons and Fruchtman (2020). 2020; 1:3 3–8 The Wabash Center Journal on Teaching 3 GUEST EDITOR’S NOTE As scholars of the period, we know this not to be true. Our research, as scholars of history,