Teaching Experience

Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion (NYU)

In the wake of the Reformation, discovery of the new world, the Wars of Religion, and the growth of the Enlightenment, religion became a problem as never before. This class will trace the effects of these events from the early modern period through the present. We will focus on two wide-ranging narratives. The first of these concerns the declining authority of God and the reciprocal ascent of the individual as it develops through Luther’s theology, Descartes’ epistemology, and Locke’s liberalism and finally arrives in the consumer technologies of contemporary cosmopolises. The second concerns the birth and growth of the academic study of religion alongside the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and sociology.The course is divided into three main sections. In the first we examine how the academic study of religion emerges from Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment critiques of religion. How, for example, do Hume’s critique of miracles and Nietzsche’s devaluation of values open the possibility of understanding religion as one object of inquiry among others? In the next section we will examine how religion becomes an object of study for the newly founded academic study of religion. We will ask, for example, how some of the most important figures of this discipline defined religion, where they located its origin, and what they thought about its future. It is important that we understand these theories on their own terms. We cannot simply dismiss Tyler or Muller because they show the imprint of their time. Only by understanding, as Ivan Strenski has said, why these theorists thought they were right can we hope to gain insight into our own problems. Armed with these tools, we will move into the final section of the course that addresses some of the most pressing issues of our day, including neoliberalism, secularization, postcoloniality, and media.This class draws into question many of the unreflective conceptions of religion that circulate today, from new-age assumptions about the difference between religion and spirituality to those that guide our foreign and domestic policy. First and foremost, this is a class about learning to ask probing questions. In a world where religion is both the guarantor of mass murder and unbounded generosity, such questions have rarely been more important.

Religions of South Asia (UNF)

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the vibrant religious traditions of South Asia. The course will examine Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, and Jain traditions as well as the ancient and modern contexts in which they are situated. In order to guide our inquiries we will focus on relations between religion and politics from the early Vedic period to the violent communalisms of the present.  The class will include extensive use of visual resources in addition to traditional texts.

Comparative Religions/Religion and Modernity (UNF)

This course will introduce students to religion in the world today.  We will examine how four religious traditions have taken shape in the modern period and how forces of rationalization, globalization, secularization, and sacralization have shaped these processes.  Our primary goal is to critically assess the uncritical deployments of religion and modernity in everyday discussions. After this course students should be able to critically examine media reports and to assess the underlying assumptions of commonsense discussion of religion. They should be able to critically compare components of religious traditions.  They should be sensitive to the important role that religion plays into contemporary global societies.

Asian Religions (UNF)

This course introduces students to the religious traditions of Asia. We will begin in India and travel eastward through Southeast Asia and East Asia. As we travel through time and space, we will try to understand how Asian Religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Islam, Shinto) came into being in relationship to specific times and places. We will ask ourselves not only what is Hinduism or Islam, but what religion is more generally. How is it lived? What is the relationship between religions and place? How do people within traditions distinguish themselves? How are each of these traditions practiced and how do the specificities of place affect these practices? We will be particularly attentive to the relationship between belief and practice. For example, how are the stories of the Buddha’s abandonment of his wife understood by women in contemporary Sri Lanka? How were they understood by second century monks? As the religions of Asia offer the senses a wondrous array of delights, this class will rely heavily on use of multimedia resources including films, photographs, and music.

Tantra, Sex, and Power (UNF)

Since its inception, tantra has been about power: power over oneself, over others, over nature, and even over the gods. This course will introduce students to the history, philosophy and practice of tantric traditions in South Asia. It will trace not only the technologies that tantrics have devised to manage and control power, but also the broader social and political relations within which they were situated. We will come to see that tantra is not simply an antinomian practice of the socially marginalized, but is instead one of the primary streams of religious practice in South Asian history.

Introduction to Asian Religions  (UCSB)

As a teaching assistant for this course, I gave several lectures and designed courseware.  The class was an introduction to the religions of Asia.  Using the Silk Road as a guide and operating metaphor throughout the class, we encouraged students to envision themselves as travelers along the silk route.  This approach allowed us to foreground the importance not simply of intra-continental connections from West to East Asia, but also to emphasize the importance of place in the construction and constitution of a tradition.  The course examined Zoroastrainism in Yadz, Iran; Hinduism in Madurai; Buddhist monastic life in central Asia and temple practices in Beijing.

Religion and Western Civilization: The Ancient World (UCSB)

As a teaching assistant for this course, I ran discussion sections, graded papers and helped design exams.  This course was an examination of religion in the ancient world from Mesopotamia through Augustine.  We engaged this material through primary texts and lectures that provided historical background.  Because lectures were given by the Professor, Christine Thomas, my job as a TA was to help student critically engage the texts and to relate these to lecture and current events where possible. 

Religion and Western Civilization: The Medieval World (UCSB)

For this course I was a very active teaching assistant: running discussions, grading, creating assignments and writing exams.  The course explored religious identity and experience from the seventh century through the protestant reformation.  Again, the focus in this course was on reading primary texts, which were extensive.  In discussion, I focused on teaching students to read these often difficult texts.  We spent many sections analyzing small dense sections of the texts.  The course was exceptionally valuable to students because, amongst other things, it taught then about the profound intellectual traditions of Medieval Islam. 

Religion and the Internet (CU Boulder)

This course was developed around TheStrip, a web journal of religion and culture, that I co-founded with professor Sam Gill and several other graduate students.  The course lasted more than a year and a half and was radically different from any other learning environment I have ever experienced.  It is here as a student and a teacher simultaneously that much of my pedagogical insights and teaching methodology were developed.  In this space, senior scholars were able to teach what they knew about theory and pedagogy and individuals such as myself were able to teach about technology and media.  The collegiality of this course produced not only a web journal, but also a publication and a collaborative panel at the national meeting of the American Academy of Religion.  When I came to UCSB for my doctoral work I continue this engagement enrolling with teaching and technology, participating in a seminar on courseware design and co-founding the Center for the Analysis of Sacred Sites (CASS), which is a space for the development of innovative pedagogy and interactive course design.  

Religions of Asia (CU Boulder)

I was a teaching assistant for this course twice at the University of Colorado at Boulder.  The course was taught by a classically trained Sanskritist who had just completed a manuscript on Gandhi.  It focused on three indigenous traditions of India: Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The approach was predominately text-historical and focused on classical textual materials. Having studied these texts extensively and conducted fieldwork throughout Asia, I was in a position to bring these texts alive for students.  As can often be the case with students who are excited by the depth of South Asian religious traditions, many of my students have remained intimately involved with the region as journalism, artists and academics.  In addition to leading discussions, over the course of these two semesters, I lectured, contributed to the course design, wrote course assignments and helped refine exams.

The Life and Thought of Mahatma Gandhi (CU Boulder)

I was a teaching assistant for this course designed to understand and evaluate the writings of Mahatma Gandhi.  Throughout the course we read and analyzed his texts, examining the religious underpinnings of his thought in Christianity, primarily through Tolstoy; Jainism through his mentor Ramchandra; and in Hinduism through his colonial inflected readings of classical Hindu texts.