1st Edition
Teaching Religion and Literature
Teaching Religion and Literature provides a practical engagement with the pedagogical possibilities of teaching religion courses using literature, teaching literature classes using religion, and teaching Religion and Literature as a discipline. Featuring chapters written by award winning teachers from a variety of institutional settings, the book gives anyone interested in providing interdisciplinary education a set of questions, resources, and tools that will deepen a classroom’s engagement with the field. Chapters are grounded in specific texts and religious questions but are oriented toward engaging general pedagogical issues that allow each chapter to improve any instructor’s engagement with interdisciplinary education. The book offers resources to instructors new to teaching Religion and Literature and provides definitions of what the field means from senior scholars in the field. Featuring a wide range of religious traditions, genres, and approaches, the book also provides an innovative glimpse at emerging possibilities for the sub-discipline.
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Teaching Religion and Literature
DANIEL BOSCALJON AND ALAN LEVINOVITZ
PART I
Foundational Approaches to Religion and Literature
1 Teaching "Religion and Literature" Contextually
WESLEY A. KORT
2 Teaching the Bible and Literature
DAVID JASPER
3 Pedagogies of Religion and Literature, Or Writing the "And": Nathan Scott, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida
RICHARD A. ROSENGARTEN
4 Openings and Closures in Religion and Literature: Heart of Darkness or Demian, Life of Pi or Something New
LARRY D. BOUCHARD
PART II
Illuminating Religious Cultures with Literature
5 Surrender to God, Surrender to Love: Teaching Islam through the Poetry of Jalaluddin Rumi
DANIELLE WIDMANN ABRAHAM
6 Using Fiction to "Explain" the Daoist Zhuang Zi
ALAN LEVINOVITZ
7 Redeeming the Human Reality: Teaching African American Religion and Literature
KIMBERLY RAE CONNOR
8 Science Fiction and the Religious Imagination: A Pedagogical Approach
JENNIFER ARDEN STONE
PART III
Thematic Approaches to Religion and Literature
9 Opening the Secular: Teaching Religion and Culture through Fiction
DANIEL BOSCALJON
10 Interrogating Faith: Using Literature to Teach Religion and Nature
NANCY MENNING
11 Contesting and Contextualizing Islam in America: Teaching Three Cups of Tea
MICHAEL BALTUTIS
12 Religion and the Self: Life Writing as a Literary Form and Religious Practice
JOHN D. BARBOUR
PART IV
Three Approaches to Teaching Siddhartha
13 Through a Buddhist Lens: Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha
CATHERINE BENTON
14 Love and Apotheosis in Hesse’s Siddhartha
PAUL FISCHER
15 Literature, Learning and Liberation: Teaching Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha
PETER ROBERTS
Index
Biography
Daniel Boscaljon is the author of Vigilant Faith, editor of Resisting the Place of Belonging and Hope and the Longing for Utopia, and author of several articles. He has taught several courses in theology, literature, philosophy, and interdisciplinary humanities as contingent faculty in the Midwest.
Alan Levinovitz is associate professor of religious studies at James Madison University. He focuses on classical Chinese philosophy, religion and literature, and religion and medicine. He authored The Limits of Religious Tolerance and several journal articles. His journalism has appeared in Wired, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Vox, Slate, and elsewhere.
"A timely collection of essays reckoning the historical spirit and future relevance of religion and literature, considerations offered with perspectives both limber in style and widely ranging in reach." --David Scott Arnold, Oregon State University
