Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
17. Teaching: Teaching in the Ideological State of Religious Studies: Notes Towards a Pedagogical Future
Constructing Data in Religious Studies - Examining the Architecture of the Academy - Leslie Dorrough Smith
Richard W. Newton, Jr. [+]
University of Alabama
Richard Newton is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama. He is author of Identifying Roots: Alex Haley and the Anthropology of Scriptures(Equinox Publishing Ltd., 2020) and former editor of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion. Newton is also curator of the social media professional development network, Sowing the Seed: Fruitful Conversations in Religion, Culture and Teaching (SowingTheSeed.org).
Description
Higher education in North America increasingly implores teachers to adopt frameworks of values education, pre-professional student-learning, and assessment backed by the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Teacher-scholars in religious studies have reason to question whether such initiatives put a critical understanding of our data at odds with the ideological state apparatuses within which our institutions are situated. Thinking with the work of Louis Althusser, this chapter historicizes classroom tensions and outlines an alternative way for theoretically-minded scholars to negotiate the task of pedagogy.