Secondary School Religion Teachers at AAR

American Academy of Religion

Moscone Center, San Francisco
Friday, November 18, 2011, 8:30am - 4:00pm

This annual event co-sponsored with the program for Religious Studies and Secondary Education at Harvard Divinity School—brings secondary school teachers together to make contacts, and hear about new developments in the fields of ethics and the major religious traditions of the world. Nationally recognized scholars share their research, and teachers share information about projects they are working on. This year's presenters are Christopher Key Chapple, Ph.D. (Southeast Asian religions), Susan Abraham (women and contemporary communities of faith), and Michael Legaspi, Ph.D. (near eastern studies and Biblical interpretation). 

Attendees at this event receive a discount rate to attend the 3-day AAR Annual Meeting (more information below).

Presentations

Hinduism, Yoga, and the Modern Age (Christopher Key Chapple, Ph.D.)
The spread of Yoga throughout the globe has introduced some key Hindu concepts to a wide and receptive group of people. The initial appeal of Yoga can be found in its techniques for stretching the body and gaining control over the mind. As one explores Yoga more deeply, a celebration of the five great elements and the experience of enthrallment with nature has given birth to a modern activist movement, the Green Yoga Association, which provides  training and advice on bringing ecological awareness into all aspects of Yoga. High school students today are likely to have some exposure to the practice of Yoga. This session will explore its roots including its connections to Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism. Some basic yoga postures and breathing will be shared that some teachers might find suitable for classroom use. 

Sage on the Page: On the Use of Wisdom in Bible Instruction (Michael Legaspi, Ph.D.)
Wisdom is difficult to define. When understood formally as an overarching conceptual framework, it brings the deep structure and aspirational character of biblical traditions into focus. Thus, wisdom may be used to host and organize the kinds of sympathetic, holistic inquiry that are essential to understanding the challenges that biblical texts pose to destructive and unreflective ways of thinking and being in the world. By understanding the wise shape of biblical teaching, teachers can offer a constructive account of the ways that texts and traditions address perennial human concerns.

Mourning, Violence, Politics and Religion (Susan Abraham, Ph.D.)
Political theorists, cultural theorists and scholars of religion have argued that the escalation of inter-national and intra-national violence against cultural and religious minorities is an occasion for mourning. But what kind of mourning becomes educators? As educators, we find ourselves seeking ways to explain to our students why such violence is escalating. Each explanatory model, however, seems to falter; thus, race, class, gender, sexuality and religious difference models have all been dismissed as "mere identity politics." It is such "exhaustion with difference" that incites contemporary conversations to think of mourning as a more productive strategy for contesting violence than fear, anxiety or rage incited by claims to otherness. Mourning thus opens up a role for emotions in the learning environment while engaging multiple interdisciplinary sources, including film and art. Participants will leave this presentation with a fuller sense of how emotions such as empathy and grief can play productive roles in the classroom when thinking through the differences of race, class, gender, sexuality and religion. 

The Secondary School Religions Classroom (Melissa Fainman)
At the request of conference participants, in recent years a current religion teacher at the secondary level has been added to the roster of presenters. The teacher presentation this year will be done by Melissa Fainman, who will offer a variety of lessons and projects that she and her colleagues have used successfully, and engage participants in discussion regarding variations and other ideas to enrich the teaching of world religions.

Agenda

8:00 - 8:30  Coffee / Tea
8:30 - 9:00  Introductions
9:00 - 10:15  Michael Legaspi, Sage on the Page: On the Use of Wisdom in Bible Instruction
10:15 - 10:30  Break
10:30 - 11:30  Melissa Fainman, The Secondary School Religions Classroom
11:30 - noon  Teacher to Teacher

noon - 1:00  Lunch
1:00 - 2:15  Christopher Key Chapple, Hinduism, Yoga and the Modern Age
2:15 - 2:30  Break
2:30 - 3:45  Susan Abraham, Mourning, Violence, Politics and Religion
3:45 - 4:00  Evaluations
  

About the Presenters

Christopher Key Chapple, Ph.D., is Doshi Professor of Indic and Comparative Theology at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. He has published more than a dozen books, including Karma and Creativity (1986), Hinduism and Ecology (2000, with Mary Evelyn Tucker), and Yoga and Ecology (2010). He edits the journal Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology (Brill) and serves on the Advisory Board for the Forum on Religion and Ecology (Yale).

Susan Abraham, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Ministry Studies at Harvard Divinity School, and Associate Director of the Center for the study of World Religions. Her current project is on how nationalist discourses construct major and minority religions. Abraham is the author of Identity, Ethics, and Nonviolence in Postcolonial Theory: A Rahnerian Theological Assessment, and co-editor of Shoulder to Shoulder: Frontiers in Catholic Feminist Theology.

Michael Legaspi, Ph.D., formerly assistant professor in the Department of Theology at Creighton University, now teaches at Philips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Trained as a biblical scholar, Legaspi teaches courses in scripture, Judaism, and Christianity, as well as intellectual history and philosophy. He has published articles and reviews in several journals, and has presented lectures at many places, including the universities of Oxford, Chicago, and Notre Dame. He is the author of The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (Oxford 2010), for which he received the 2011 John Templeton Award for Theological Promise. Legaspi is currently working on a book that explores biblical interpretation as a wisdom-seeking endeavor. 

Melissa Fainman teaches and is head of the social studies department at the Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire, Illinois. Fainman has been a frequent attendee at both AAR secondary school teacher meetings over the past decade, as well as at CSEE's Summer Institutes on Teaching the World's Religions. She is also a contributor to Religion Teacher Update.

About the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting

The annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion is the largest gathering of religious studies scholars and teachers in the world. Keynote speakers, paper presentations, and informal receptions allow opportunities for secondary school teachers to learn about new developments in a broad range of fields, and to make new contacts. Publisher displays offer hundreds of new resources, at discounted prices, for both personal scholarship and classroom use. Registration price for those also attending the CSEE meeting is $80. Please write this in when filling out the AAR registration form, and indicate that you are attending the CSEE event, per Soraya Shahrak.

Accommodations

CSEE has reserved a block of rooms at The Best Western Plus Americana. To get a reservation at our special rate, please reserve online and put "CSEE" in the promo/corp code.