Teaching Statement
Below I briefly share some of my pedagogical commitments and reflections. Please see my full teaching statement here.
I see learning as a process not only of development but also of transformation. As a teacher, I seek to foster opportunities for challenging assumptions, grappling with complexity, and articulating nuance—and to help students develop their capacities for doing so. To this end, I value student engagement with primary sources as well as seminal and innovative scholarship, and I place a high value on the role of writing in student learning. These practices of humanistic inquiry, I believe, are powerful in that they can help us learn to listen closely and to seek to truly understand before moving to evaluation and response.
In teaching religion, the most important enduring understanding that I want students to learn is that all religions are diverse within their own traditions, both across time and across contexts. This understanding can help us to decenter ourselves, if we are members of a larger faith tradition, and help us to be better citizens of our communities and our world by instilling in us a posture of humility and curiosity.
Studying religion through history can—and should—make us more “magnanimous” people, in the sense of expanding our minds and our spirits. I seek to engage students with the question of how we can be more self-aware and humbler, as well as more imaginative and courageous, when we learn from the perspectives and experiences of past humans, especially as they have grappled with questions of significance, purpose, and how to live life well.
As the discipline of history has the potential to foster this more civil and magnanimous demeanor within us, so too does an approach to teaching and learning that values mutuality, dialogue, and positive regard. Inspired by feminist, constructivist, critical, and culturally responsive pedagogies, I work to foster environments in which each person’s contributions are valued, learning is understood as a constructive and collaborative process, and the aim of education is to promote the freedom and flourishing of all.
Teaching Writing
In teaching writing, I focus on (1) the writing process and (2) the importance of clarity and precision.
First, I believe it is essential to teach, model, and discuss the entire trajectory of the writing process from inquiry and investigation to drafting, editing, revision, and ‘publication.’ The writing process is about so much more than mechanics: it involves a variety of complex skills and experiences from project planning and critical thinking to metacognitive reflection and even personal self-discovery. The classroom community can, and ideally should, help students to learn about the writing process in this holistic way.
Second, I believe that clarity and precision should be the aim of any academic writing. Mechanics, grammar, conventions—these are important in service to clarity and precision. While it is important to help students develop freedom of expression and independent voice, it also is extremely valuable for all students to work toward developing more precise and clear academic writing, especially as students are called upon to engage with ever-increasing nuance and complexity.
I desire to help my students learn to appreciate writing as a life-long discipline not only for communicating but also for thinking through complexity and nuance, significance and implication.
Sample Teaching Materials
Sample Writing Assignment
Sample Lesson for Teaching Religion with Archival Materials
Sample Class Activities
Close Reading Class Activity (Duke Divinity School, Church History)
Quotation Selection Group Activity (Duke Divinity School, Church History)
Sample Course Design
Women in Christianity through Digital Humanities
Sample Humanities Lesson for Secondary Education
African American Spirituals: Close Reading and Interpretation