Teaching
and Talking about Religion in Public
 |
Goals
and Objectives: Phase Two
|
This program will serve as a national model for
encouraging rigorous teaching, scholarship, and dialogue about
religion
and religious conflict across the academy, not just within
religious studies departments. Goals include:
- Strengthening academic freedom.
This program will enhance academic freedom by encouraging
reasoned exchange among students and faculty on difficult
issues that are often ignored in the classroom.
- Preparing faculty for a more religiously
diverse student body. Through empowering faculty to
develop new courses (and revise existing ones) that spark
genuine,
deep, and meaningful dialogue about the difficult issues
of religion and conflict, we aim to equip faculty from a
wide variety of disciplines with
the intellectual
and
pedagogical
resources necessary to address controversial religious
issues among an increasingly diverse student body.
- Preparing students for a world marked
by increasing heterogeneity and religious conflict.
By encouraging the creation of new courses
that explicitly
deal with
religion as it operates in the midst of real world conflicts,
we aim to prepare students
for encounters they themselves may face, personally
and professionally, in the course of their lives, enabling
them to become more sensitive to and adept at negotiating
religious
diversity
and religious
conflict.
Specific outcomes to be achieved during the project include:
- The development of a core course that all students completing
the undergraduate certificate program in religion and conflict
are required to take, as well as additional course modules
that can be integrated into new or existing courses in the
certificate program. The goal is to integrate religion across
the curriculum so that it is not perceived to be the exclusive
domain of religious studies and religion experts. The core
course, tentatively titled “Religion and Conflict:
Theories and Cases,” will introduce students to fundamental
issues, themes, and approaches to religion and conflict in
the contemporary world.
- The creation of a faculty seminar that brings
together a dozen faculty members from across the university
for monthly discussions around selected topics and readings
pertaining
to religion’s role in public life and conflict. The
purpose of the seminar is to facilitate cross-disciplinary
discussion of religion, contemporary politics,
and society that will enrich individual faculty expertise;
lead to new potential collaborations among faculty; and encourage
course development and additional faculty participation in
the religion and conflict certificate program.
- The creation of a series of workshops that focus explicitly
on pedagogical issues and target faculty who are currently
teaching courses in the religion and conflict certificate
program. These workshops will allow us to reflect
on the complicated nature of dialogue in a classroom setting.
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